No, in all fairness, while the seats themselves are fine for legroom (and indeed the aisle and table seats of 196/231/745/755 are great), the legroom of window airline seats is ridiculously obstructed by this diagonal bar that fixes the seats to the wall, which goes right where a person's legs would go. Anyone six foot or taller has to sort of tuck their legs under their own seat.
That’s not because of the seat though, plenty of modern trains have cantilevered seating. The 805s have LEANs in first class, which have conventional vertical fixings.
Showing that we continue, as always, the tradition of shooting ourselves in the foot again. Just think how good the IETs could have been had we had at least some touches and flair of the DB / Siemens ICE fleets, let alone our next Flagship high speed project.
You get what you pay for and they went for budget seating so we got budget seating.
It’s standard practice in the UK rail industry now to cheap out on seats. I think it’s here to stay too.
Except we didn't, did we? The IET fleet is very expensive - around 1/3 more than a Pendolino from memory (inflation adjusted) - yet somehow we'd been landed with a "cheap" product. Worst of all words, and a fine example of why civil servants should never be allowed to run projects such as IEP.
The ICE trains are wider than UK trains internally, so what works for those trains may well not for UK trains without compromising aisle space unacceptably.
Indeed, given how high the seat backs are you'd probably have to be so tall as not to be able stand upright in a Pendolino without banging your head on the ceiling anyway!
It looks better than First Class on GWR lol
Very much this. Width doesn't exactly dictate how the lighting is set up (soft or dentist mode), or the colour or design of interior panels, or the choice of seat / seat base and Moquette covering. The IET should have aimed for ICE like quality, but gave us a cold harsh, frequently complained about train instead all through cost cutting.
I am not saying the whole product is "cheap", but the seating is. Better seats could have been specified but they would have added to the cost.
Dont suppose you can just stick a couple of cabs and coaches in sidings and mash two sets together to Pendo length. Then put the stored bits back when needed (like the 9 to 11 car Crossrail trains)?
They’ve been ordered though, and will presumably be completed before any scheme to get 400m trains to Manchester is.
DB ICE3 Neo seats would be much better.
No. When over padded they are tall and uncomfortable. The fold down tables are naff and legroom can often be poor. Besides the fact they are a 1980s design and wouldn’t meet any modern standard these days, just like the seemingly beloved IC70.
Agreed. The legroom is appalling, not helped by the very deep seat backs and overall I find the seats rather small. Comfortable enough, but certainly not a premium design! There's much better out there in continental Europe.
