Most hated traction

[RichmondCommu]

Amazed you can get on/off the train to London with those door handles. I take it your house has power operated doors and not an old-fashioned door handle?

The major difference being that to open a house door from the inside you don't have to pull down a window and then grapple with an external door handle. Or perhaps things are different in your house / apartment?

 

[kevjs]

Amazed you can get on/off the train to London with those door handles. I take it your house has power operated doors and not an old-fashioned door handle?

Never encountered a door where you have to open a window to open the door from the outside before, most door handles are on the inside, and trains normally have a button next to the door, or open automatically.

Only when I remembered a presentation about poor user interface design (where this layout was featured) did I remember there were some badly designed doors on the railway and then I spotted the sign above the door (I.e. miles away from the normal location for a push button or for handle) and realise what needed doing.

Say what you like about the Pacers and the Sprinters (which pretty much all my jornies as a kid were on) but even they aren't that archaic... Once I started uni and using trains semi regularly it was Pendalinos, voygers, Pacers, Sprinters, and Turbostars all round...

 

[F Great Eastern]

Never encountered a door where you have to open a window to open the door from the outside before, most door handles are on the inside, and trains normally have a button next to the door, or open automatically.

Only when I remembered a presentation about poor user interface design (where this layout was featured) did I remember there were some badly designed doors on the railway and then I spotted the sign above the door (I.e. miles away from the normal location for a push button or for handle) and realise what needed doing.

Say what you like about the Pacers and the Sprinters (which pretty much all my jornies as a kid were on) but even they aren't that archaic... Once I started uni and using trains semi regularly it was Pendalinos, voygers, Pacers, Sprinters, and Turbostars all round...

Never been on an MKII or an MKIII that doesn't have powered doors?

Open the window, reach outside, turn the handle and away you go!

 

[najaB]

Only when I remembered a presentation about poor user interface design (where this layout was featured) did I remember there were some badly designed doors on the railway...

Old ≠bad design.

The design of having the handle on the outside pre-dates central locking and push-button doors. And there's a very practical reason why the handle on the outside is a safer design - it forces the user to at least look out of the window, reducing the likelihood of opening the door while the train is moving, or where there is no platform.

 

[kevjs]

Never been on an MKII or an MKIII that doesn't have powered doors?

Open the window, reach outside, turn the handle and away you go!

Not that I can recall, when I was a kid we always got to push the buttons top open the train doors, of course when on the older stock our parents may have known they weren't unintuitive and took charge without us realising. Even then the bulk of the stock we were travelling on was Sprinters, Pacers and Networkers (i.e. mainly local services from Preston and Oxford in the mid-late 1990s)

By the time I was travelling on my own it was Pacers and Sprinters to Manchester or Voygers/Pendalinos to Crewe and then Turbostars to Nottingham. Somehow managed to avoid any slam door stock (where I was at the front of the queue anyway) for 15 years!

Then again, when I was a kid buses used to have a pole in the middle of the stepped doorway, and most shops had steps to get in the narrow doorway too - Can't remember the last time I got on a bus which didn't have a wide entrance, low floor, and no pole in the doorway, and it's rare for me to encounter a shop with a stepped entrance too. Things change and times move on - and those door handles on a HST (coupled with the bouncy ride, fixed armrests and general tattyness of the EMT fleet) make the HSTs feel like a relic of the past.

Old ≠bad design.

The design of having the handle on the outside pre-dates central locking and push-button doors. And there's a very practical reason why the handle on the outside is a safer design - it forces the user to at least look out of the window, reducing the likelihood of opening the door while the train is moving, or where there is no platform.

That's just reminded me of the rest of that bit of the presentation - I do remember him (an American (I think) UX expert who'd struggled to get the doors open too) saying it made sense originally (i.e. if you open mid journey you fall out and die), but with central locking it's just unintuitive. Another bad bit of design he featured was the plug sockets on the train - mounted in such a way that if you had a Macbook power brick you couldn't plug it in as it was mounted so near the table top!

 

[najaB]

That's just reminded me of the rest of that bit of the presentation - I do remember him (an American (I think) UX expert who'd struggled to get the doors open too) saying it made sense originally (i.e. if you open mid journey you fall out and die), but with central locking it's just unintuitive.

He might be a UX expert, but he isn't a train design expert. The issue is that the CDL system that could practically be retrofitted isn't strong enough to prevent the door handle being turned from the inside. Having to reach outside, as well as the benefits listed above, also reduces the amount of force that can be applied to the handle.

 

[Dent]

He might be a UX expert, but he isn't a train design expert. The issue is that the CDL system that could practically be retrofitted isn't strong enough to prevent the door handle being turned from the inside. Having to reach outside, as well as the benefits listed above, also reduces the amount of force that can be applied to the handle.

On all the MkII/MkIII carriages I've been on the CDL has consisted of a locking pin acting on the top edge of the door, nothing to do with preventing the handle being turned.

 

[DarloRich]

Never encountered a door where you have to open a window to open the door from the outside before, most door handles are on the inside, and trains normally have a button next to the door, or open automatically.

what???????????????? kids today don't know they are born

 

[najaB]

On all the MkII/MkIII carriages I've been on the CDL has consisted of a locking pin acting on the top edge of the door, nothing to do with preventing the handle being turned.

Sorry, I failed to transfer what was in my head to the written page.

It wasn't possible to fit a CDL system to the handle which would have been strong enough to prevent the handle from being turned. So the system as installed - as you correctly say - works by using a pin at the top of the door.

With this system, if the handle was on the inside you could turn it and brute force the door at the same time. With the handle outside it is difficult to turn the handle *and* apply significant force to the door at the same time.

 

[43096]

Things change and times move on - and those door handles on a HST (coupled with the bouncy ride, fixed armrests and general tattyness of the EMT fleet) make the HSTs feel like a relic of the past.

I don't recognise your description of the EMT HST fleet: the interiors are still fine (been a while since refresh, but they are holding up well) and the bouncy ride is just plain wrong. Try a Mark 4 on the East Coast and an HST over the same section of track and tell me which rides better. You'll be telling us that Voyagers are better than HSTs next...

 

[JohnElliott]

If you want bad UX on a door, you can get a lot worse than a slammer with the handle on the outside. There are, for example, the Danish ones that allowed a toddler to open the door and fall out while the train was in motion (RAIB report):

Whilst it is impossible to be sure about exactly how the door became open and how this led to the child falling out of the train, a likely scenario is that the two-year-old child pulled herself up from her sitting position on the floor, by using the two handles consecutively. The lower handle would have rotated and unlocked the door so that as soon as she pulled the upper handle, the door, which opens into the train's slipstream, was free to swing open and drag her out of the train.

 

[Millisle]

Most hated traction? That will be rail replacement buses.

 

[ScouserGirl]

Most of my journeys are around Nottingham so the traction is rather limited (No Pacers here)

1. East Midlands Trains HST's - uncomfortable seating, feels like you're on a bouncy castle, the horrid fixed arm rests and complete lack of legroom in the airline seating (oh, and having to lean out the window to open the door - that's so confusing and daft, it was 2015 before I encountered that for the first time on non-heritage railway trains and it's just so archaic)

2. CrossCountry's Turbostars. Never used to mind these when they were with Central Trains (apart from when they were overcrowded) but CrossCountry's sound like they are falling to bits.

3. Northern Line's 1995 Stock - the celings are low enough in them that I can't stand up straight unless I'm in the middle of the train, but which eejit compounded that by putting a grab rail across the door way? My head hates you!

So your saying you have never been on a MKIII? am on 23 and I remember intercity when I was a child!!