Poor Design Examples....

[skyhigh]

Going back to 158s, I don't like how the Compressor speed up switch is located very close to the cab light switches, had a few close calls fumbling around in the dark on the move.

Same problem when we had 150s. Always the same dopey guards that would give me an emergency brake application.

Interesting one, as we were told on our driver traction course that the compressor speed up in the rear cab of a 158 wouldn't apply the brakes (but it would on a 150). Can't say I've ever tried it though to find out...

 

[yorksrob]

Original Airblades are terrible. You have to put your hands in a slot full of accumulated grime and hold them very steady else you touch it and negate the point of having washed them to start with. The only good dryers were the old heated "World" type ones with the big button you were meant to hit with your elbow.

I always found them quite effective (and I have terrible hand/eye coordination)

 

[JamesT]

The Voyager. All of it. Noise. Stench. The flush button being behind the seat. The doors. The windows. The lighting. The seats. The glare surfaces everywhere. The HVAC. The stench. The lack of fresh air. The cycle racks. The stench.

Easily the worst machine running on the network today.

Flush button behind the seat is good design, makes you put the seat down first.

 

[dk1]

Interesting one, as we were told on our driver traction course that the compressor speed up in the rear cab of a 158 wouldn't apply the brakes (but it would on a 150). Can't say I've ever tried it though to find out...

It works

 

[lxfe_mxtterz]

The horrendous, dodgy tap sensors in the toilets on the Class 745 - this quote from @trebor79 on another thread sums it up perfectly:

Sensor is to one side so the water doesn't fall onto your hands, and as soon as you move them the water switches off. After 5 or 6 goes there's a "CLUNK" from behind the mirror, and that's it sunshine, no more water for you!
Just needs the "Stay switched on timer" adjusted to 5 seconds instead of 5 nanoseconds and it'll be fine.

Not once have I ever walked out of the toilets on these trains without soapy hands. Usually I'm left to scour the length of the train for another toilet to (attempt to) rinse the remaining soap off my hands before that tap decides its had enough and decides to shut off too!

 

[pdeaves]

On the IET 'universal access' loos, I am forever pointing out to people where the door close/lock button is (it's the price you pay for standing in a vestibule because your stop's not far away!). People enter, turn back for where the close button 'should' be, then bumble around in a very confused state. It's particularly appropriate come November-January time - "It's behiiiiind you!".

 

[Need2]

Flush button behind the seat is good design, makes you put the seat down first.

No it’s not!
If the ‘user’ doesn’t put the seat down quite often they assume the passcomm all call for aid button is the flush!

 

[pdeaves]

No it’s not!
If the ‘user’ doesn’t put the seat down quite often they assume the passcomm all call for aid button is the flush!

Or simply doesn't flush. Yuk.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Position of the pan in almost all universal access toilets, which if you're not short and skinny means you have to sit sideways. Way too close to the sink.

This also seems to be the case in far too many home bathrooms, e.g. in my parents' house you can't use the loo without burning your knee on the radiator. An incredibly easy thing to fix.

As for other stuff...I don't get why Voyager windows are getting a slating - they're massive! If you want to slate windows try small ones on Pendolinos, or single-glazed door windows on CAF units which steam up and cause rattly doors due to a lack of rigidity. The issue is the (non-)alignment of the seats to them.

Meanwhile I think I've got a pretty good one here. The Class 720 interior layout. Ticked a box by cramming lots of seats in, but hardly any standing room and no real chance of occupying all of them without blocking the narrow aisle unless with schoolkids. A fairly easy fix would be to remove the third seat for a wider aisle per the 700s etc or as Merseyrail did in the 80s.

 

[yoyothehobo]

Guard door controls on 195s have to be up there. On opposite sides of the carriage at opposite ends of the carriage. So if you dont know what platform you are being sent into at Leeds you have to fight through the people who are standing to get off because you have gambled wrong.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Guard door controls on 195s have to be up there. On opposite sides of the carriage at opposite ends of the carriage. So if you dont know what platform you are being sent into at Leeds you have to fight through the people who are standing to get off because you have gambled wrong.

There's an answer to that which is used on most trains across the country, even those with guards, but unfortunately nobody up at Northern nor their Unions saw sense.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Northern's TVMs

Window alignment on 195s etc

The tiny bins on 195s

 

[Bletchleyite]

Northern's TVMs

Almost all UK TVMs in fact. LNERs seem to be least worst. I can use a S&B very quickly but it's not a superb piece of design.

Window alignment on 195s etc

Yes, that's just lazy.

The tiny bins on 195s

Tiny bins on most trains. Needs to be easy to put a coffee cup (the most common litter) in, and clearly visible, most are neither.

 

[pdeaves]

Tiny bins on most trains. Needs to be easy to put a coffee cup (the most common litter) in, and clearly visible, most are neither.

If I remember correctly, the IET/Azuma contract insisted on (almost) no bins because there would be regular cleaner 'sweeps'. Fine if the cleaner can get through when it's crowded, and even more so if they happen to pass by at the right moment. Otherwise, even those who would clear their rubbish away (understood that not everyone does) feels guilty about not being able to, and there's nowhere to put the previous people's rubbish.

 

[Doctor Fegg]

80X bike compartments.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The Fainsa Sophia. Promised to be a good seat, shaped similarly to and with similar firmness to the Grammer E3000 Desiro seat, but some idiot decided it should have a base frame with a step in it* and a thin cushion which means you can feel the base through it after about 20 minutes. Awful thing that needn't have been so bad if the base frame had been a flat metal plate.

Furthermore, TOCs (Thameslink, ScotRail, LNR 730s) who think this abomination of a seat is suitable for First Class! The ScotRail staff when I tried the 385 mockup were not impressed when I told them Standard was considerably more comfortable.

* I think the *idea* is that your weight goes into the deeper part and you need less cushion under your upper thigh, but unfortunately that's designing it for only one shape of person. It might even have worked if the step wasn't as, er, stepped.

The fad of pointlessly tiny luggage racks in early-2000s designs like Voyagers, *Stars and 175/180s.

Lack of gangways on 195s when Northern intended to multiple-work them.

Seats by blanks and luggage racks by windows on Pendolinos. Really wouldn't have been hard to, you know, swap them over?

Seats by 80x door pockets. Just put a luggage rack there!

Turbostar internal doors. Did they ever work?

 

[Goldfish62]

Guard door controls on 195s have to be up there. On opposite sides of the carriage at opposite ends of the carriage. So if you dont know what platform you are being sent into at Leeds you have to fight through the people who are standing to get off because you have gambled wrong.

That's madness. That surely must have been an error rather than deliberate.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That's madness. That surely must have been an error rather than deliberate.

They were intended to be DOO and were bodged on quite late on the cheap if I recall. If driver release had been agreed it'd not be an issue, but there's a history of North West drivers/guards refusing that - the same happened with the 175s, so it was somewhat predictable.

 

[trebor79]

The horrendous, dodgy tap sensors in the toilets on the Class 745 - this quote from @trebor79 on another thread sums it up perfectly:



Not once have I ever walked out of the toilets on these trains without soapy hands. Usually I'm left to scour the length of the train for another toilet to (attempt to) rinse the remaining soap off my hands before that tap decides its had enough and decides to shut off too!

Ah, I have since found two workarounds:
1. For some reason they aren't as bad in the disabled toilet.
2. Continuously move your hands around from side to side and round and round and the water will mostly stay on and you'll get them nice and wet.

It does seem that some of the sinks are afflicted a greater extent than others though.

 

[railfan99]

Perhaps it is due to high passenger flows but on my UK holiday when transferring twice thus far between Euston Tube stn and eponymous National Rakl stn, why is one forced to walk 10 metres out into the open?

Surely the glass separation could be removed? Doing this on my first full day in UK when it rained was not fun.

 

[skyhigh]

Turbostar internal doors. Did they ever work?

They seem to work pretty reliably on Northern 170s.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Perhaps it is due to high passenger flows but on my UK holiday when transferring twice thus far between Euston Tube stn and eponymous National Rakl stn, why is one forced to walk 10 metres out into the open?

Surely the glass separation could be removed? Doing this on my first full day in UK when it rained was not fun.

This was done on purpose, until about 2 years ago it was inside. I believe the reason was so they can close access to the Tube without closing access to the main station and vice versa, and without any queue if they do close it blocking the doors. I don't think it works very well, mostly because it involves going round a "blind corner" - it's not 10m, it's right next to the exit. Thus it's poor design even given the principles behind it.

You can also get to it via the ramp to P8-11 if you don't want to go outside, or down the stairs on the Sainsbury's side.

 

[Dr_Paul]

I tend to find the passenger DOOR OPEN and DOOR CLOSE buttons are sometimes a bit confusing. I find they're usually stacked vertically but sometimes the OPEN is at the top and other times the CLOSE is at the top.

Yes, I've noticed this. I was at Clapham Junction once, not knowing that I was pushing the wrong button, and eventually a bloke pointed out to me what I was doing wrong. I can't recall on what type of EMU I was travelling.

 

[The Chimaera]

Surely the best example of something that works extremely poorly, if at all is the DFT..

 

[Goldfish62]

Surely the best example of something that works extremely poorly, if at all is the DFT..

Good call!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Surely the best example of something that works extremely poorly, if at all is the DFT..

"The structure of the industry" certainly!

 

[Mikey C]

Perhaps it is due to high passenger flows but on my UK holiday when transferring twice thus far between Euston Tube stn and eponymous National Rakl stn, why is one forced to walk 10 metres out into the open?

Surely the glass separation could be removed? Doing this on my first full day in UK when it rained was not fun.

This was done on purpose, until about 2 years ago it was inside. I believe the reason was so they can close access to the Tube without closing access to the main station and vice versa, and without any queue if they do close it blocking the doors. I don't think it works very well, mostly because it involves going round a "blind corner" - it's not 10m, it's right next to the exit. Thus it's poor design even given the principles behind it.

You can also get to it via the ramp to P8-11 if you don't want to go outside, or down the stairs on the Sainsbury's side.

I assume it was built for the night tube, as the only way to enter Euston tube station is via the NR station, so they effectively had to find a way of turning this entrance into an outside one so that at nighttime they didn't have to keep the whole NR station open just for tube users!

The bad design here was that Euston tube station, when the whole area was rebuilt in the 60s, wasn't given a separate entrance outside the NR station as well! None of the other major London termini stations have this arrangement.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I assume it was built for the night tube, as the only way to enter Euston tube station is via the NR station, so they effectively had to find a way of turning this entrance into an outside one so that at nighttime they didn't have to keep the whole NR station open just for tube users!

I didn't think of that - yet another reason. Though were that the only reason they could have had a roller shutter on the side between the main concourse and the Tube entrance so you could go in either way rather than barricading it off completely.

The bad design here was that Euston tube station, when the whole area was rebuilt in the 60s, wasn't given a separate entrance outside the NR station as well! None of the other major London termini stations have this arrangement.

Yes, true.

 

[XAM2175]

I tend to find the passenger DOOR OPEN and DOOR CLOSE buttons are sometimes a bit confusing. I find they're usually stacked vertically but sometimes the OPEN is at the top and other times the CLOSE is at the top.

The good news is that the PRM-TSI standardises this:

4.2.2.3.1. (5) If both open and close door control devices are fitted one above the other, the top device shall always be the open control.

The bad news is that you have to wait for all the trains with the wrong pattern to be replaced or upgraded for it to be totally fixed.

I also don't like it when the doors are released by the train crew and then both buttons light up. To me that's the system suggesting pressing the CLOSE button to close a door that's already closed? Similarly when you open the door but the OPEN button remains illuminated.

Yeah this is just odd.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I believe the UK RVAR (Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations) standard required the opposite (so as to make it easier to reach by someone in a wheelchair), hence why open is at the bottom on a lot of older stock.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Oct 2022 ==

Yeah this is just odd.

Them both lighting up is just a symptom of them being wired into the old wiring where that was the case, which being proper old fashioned electricals rather than computer controlled isn't clever enough to identify the door's position. You only get it on the likes of 150s where they've always done that. Certainly with the old buttons if you pressed open when already open or vice versa you still got the sound of an air valve operating and achieving nothing.