East Mids Area Rail Capacity

m_m said:

Hi,

Having travelled by train more widely recently, I'm starting to realise just how short and 'low capacity' trains feel on the Midland mainline and the network around Nottingham/Derby.

Jumped on an (I think) 11 coach service from Euston to Manchester the other day, and even within the coaches there seemed to be more rooms and more seats. Likewise, had to get a very long Hitachi train up past York, again, loads of room and loads of carriages.

By contrast, my local services are Emr and XC, almost always very busy, very short trains. Even the local stopper trains are half the length they need to be.

I know EMR have new trains on the way, but again these seem to be shorter units they want to couple up when they fancy it. Why not just run longer trains?

Is there any end in sight to this short train, overcrowding thing? Am I just imagining that even within the trains, the amount of space feels low due to design choices? If so, will things get better if refitted and is this planned?

Sorry if this has been covered a million times, I'd like to think things will improve at some point! Ta

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dosxuk said:

It's the 80x that are non-standard. St Pancras was rebuilt with the standard platform length to allow 10x23m or 12x20m carriages. Until the arrival of the 80x's, there were no 26m carriages on the network, allowing for 10x26m would have been seen as wasting space and money.

A standard 9x26m 80x formation would fit at St Pancras - it's only because they want to run short trains that they need the ability to split and join into halves that means they need space for 10 cars.

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