Grand Central cancels plans to run London - Blackpool service

[YorksLad12]

Is the moment I point out that all the old trains (Mk3s and Mk4s) were retrofitted with sensors that did a fairly good job of detecting whether a seat had anyone sat in it and so were able to provide real time updates to carriages loading on the little pictograms on station screens and if you were signed into the wifi could show you a seat map which showed possible empty seats? Meanwhile the DfT specified trains lack this functionality (I imagine that they know how many people per carriage but they certainly have no way of knowing which seats are taken)...

Going off topic lightly, but having to board the train first and find the web page to try and find where the spare seats were was a little pointless. I never got it to work before the train arrived, anyway! Probably because you had to be on the train to know which train it was... The seat sensors also had trouble working out the difference between a person and a person's hand luggage if I recall correctly.

But not having anything at all is a backward step.

 

[ABB125]

Door for the first class section?

First class, it's the same on the Grand Central 180s.

HSTs were the same too.

Thanks very much