The Sunday Times: 'Ironing board' seats

[jon0844]

There is no basis for assuming any such thing. The media, both press and broadcast, are only too keen to pickup a packaged 'news' item, - especially that they can present as if they are with the 'poor downtrodden' public. The Sunday Times article had no additional information for me than the broken record message that has been rattling atround this forum for months. The BBC London article was just a series of rants from 'representative' passenger vox pops together with a few words by an osteopath (I suppose they couldn't get a physiotherpist to support the story), conflating commuters sitting in office seats and train seats. He was probably eager to get the plug on regional TV.

Given these trains have been in service since 2016, I am surprised the story came out (especially with the 'ironing board' seat reference) just before the GN route saw lots of new trains in service. Maybe not even surprised, more suspicious.

I wonder if they took information from here, and if someone went to the media to tip them off that there was a good story. A nice way to attack the railway, which is once again in vogue thanks to Vir, sorry, Stagecoach and the interest in nationalisation. Here we have the DfT cost cutting and a failing TOC.. it's like a dream come true!

They wouldn't spend the extra money on each seat! Tightarses. Heck, why not compare with the cladding on buildings to make it an even bigger story? Are we not worth the extra money?

Of course, the media had a story anyway. If they discovered the DfT had spent an extra £100 per seat, someone with a calculator with nice big buttons would have worked out the extra cost and pointed out that it was a total waste of money, especially when trains are now so crowded nobody can get a seat anyway.

I know people who have been using them, not through choice but just because that's what is now running, and they value the space. They aren't blown away by the seats and I'm sure over time they'll dislike the window seats, but they certainly aren't upset. There's still the new train excitement and even the new train smell. Wi-Fi is valued (as it is on the 387s) and so far they're far from overcrowded - and it's STILL people mostly not moving around. They still board through one or two doors, despite there being 16 doors to choose from, but we know behaviour WILL change.

I don't expect people to ever come to love the seats if they find them uncomfortable, and we know there are less seats on a coach for coach basis over the old trains. They're never going to be 365 quality, but they ARE definitely better than the 387s in terms of moving people.

With a fatality near Hitchin yesterday and a series of cancellations, the 700s will have been very useful - if only there had been more of them. They proved their worth in making up time with decent acceleration when moved to the fast line to overtake delayed services.

I am sure the media will watch on to see when there's the first incident with a 700 on the Great Northern that leads to a major delay. Maybe the author simply doesn't like them and lives on the route?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Surely the way to do this is to have a largish space near the door which can accommodate either standing commuters or suitcases, rather than an unnecessarily wide aisle.

It has both.

The wide aisle is necessary. It works very, very well on these trains operating through the Thameslink core to allow people to move around a full-and-standing train to board and alight far more easily than any UK rolling stock before it. It also means people move down the aisle in a way they don't on other stock as there's enough space to do so comfortably. They work so much better - demonstrably so - than anything that went before for this purpose.

Apart from the matter of the heating conduit, they really are spot on for the Thameslink core.

The only thing that leads me to think is that maybe the Thameslink core shouldn't be used for services from quite so far away - possibly it should be more like Crossrail and just be, say, East Croydon to St Albans/Luton, with Brighton services going over to Southern and the reintroduction of BedPan services by EMT, both using something more conventional stock wise (and abandon the moving of GN services onto it). But people wouldn't like that either, would they? Thameslink is very popular.

It'd all be very nice to have end-doored low density EMUs running from Brighton and Cambridge on what are sort-of shortish IC services a bit like Norwich. But that is mutually exclusive from running them effectively through the Thameslink core as is planned.

 

[DaveN]

Despite losing a £3400 subsidised ticket sale, it is gaining about £1500 pounds for less than 50 full-priced journeys and four return trips with space for an extra passenger.

Actually the £3400 was net - £5000 for the monthly seasons less £1600 for the full price returns

 

[3141]

They're known as ironing boards because they look exactly like ironing boards.

I was able to work that out, but the term is being used here, and in the press reports quoted at the start of the thread, in relation to the comfort (or discomfort) levels of the class 700 seats. What they look like is quite different from what they feel like.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I was able to work that out, but the term is being used here, and in the press reports quoted at the start of the thread, in relation to the comfort (or discomfort) levels of the class 700 seats. What they look like is quite different from what they feel like.

The term is just being used to identify recognisably the type of seat.

 

[Mikey C]

I have to say that the Met Line S stock might be a bit challenging for the peaks (less seats than the now scrapped A stock - RIP) , but off peak on the usual quite busy trains that one sees these days , are an absolute joy. Proper , well cushioned seats , and in the 4 seat bays , almost luxcerious.

I think the S stock are cracking trains for what they do. And even the tip up seats on the S7s are nice and squashy, it's weird really when the 2009 Victoria Line seats from around the same time are short and hard, and the seats on the refurbished 95 and 96 stock are also hard.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I think the S stock are cracking trains for what they do. And even the tip up seats on the S7s are nice and squashy, it's weird really when the 2009 Victoria Line seats from around the same time are short and hard, and the seats on the refurbished 95 and 96 stock are also hard.

I would agree that for their role it is very difficult to fault the S-stock in any way, and the ways I occasionally come up with are downright trivial.

But two things to bear in mind, firstly that the Tube SSL loading gauge is wider than the UK mainline one, and secondly - would Brighton passengers be happy with partially longitudinal seating?

 

[Mikey C]

I would agree that for their role it is very difficult to fault the S-stock in any way, and the ways I occasionally come up with are downright trivial.

But two things to bear in mind, firstly that the Tube SSL loading gauge is wider than the UK mainline one, and secondly - would Brighton passengers be happy with partially longitudinal seating?

I wasn't suggesting that the 700s copy the S8 layout, but they are an example of a modern train where the seating fitted is cushioned. And, especially with the S7s, an example of a new train which the vast majority of passengers will consider a major improvement on its predecessor!

 

[Bletchleyite]

I wasn't suggesting that the 700s copy the S8 layout, but they are an example of a modern train where the seating fitted is cushioned.

True. The point I was making was more that the width of the transverse seating wouldn't be feasible on the 700s without circulation being impeded too much as it is quite wide. The padding probably would, though.

And, especially with the S7s, an example of a new train which the vast majority of passengers will consider a major improvement on its predecessor!

Indeed. It's made me go from avoiding the subsurface lines to choosing them, where a journey involving either them or the deep Tube is an option. It really is a good design and the build quality seems high as well.

 

[class387]

I would agree that for their role it is very difficult to fault the S-stock in any way, and the ways I occasionally come up with are downright trivial.

But two things to bear in mind, firstly that the Tube SSL loading gauge is wider than the UK mainline one, and secondly - would Brighton passengers be happy with partially longitudinal seating?

Brighton passengers could get one of the more comfortable bays, while for short distance passengers the longitudinal seats are fine, just like on the 345s, which are a much better compromise than the 700s.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Brighton passengers could get one of the more comfortable bays, while for short distance passengers the longitudinal seats are fine, just like on the 345s, which are a much better compromise than the 700s.

So what would you reckon to the Crossrail Class 345 for Thameslink, then (maybe a 20m version if 24m vehicles would clout the tunnel walls)? It is basically a heavy rail version of the S-stock, and another excellent design specified by TfL from my experience of trying one (give or take the technical issues they seem to be having).

To be fair, being tall I do prefer longitudinal over impossibly tight airline seating. Though longitudinal does mean slightly fewer seats than tight-packed airline 2+2.

 

[class387]

So what would you reckon to the Crossrail Class 345 for Thameslink, then (maybe a 20m version if 24m vehicles would clout the tunnel walls)? It is basically a heavy rail version of the S-stock, and another excellent design specified by TfL from my experience of trying one (give or take the technical issues they seem to be having).

That would have been my prefered solution, yes. I also prefer the Aventra as a product.

 

[Bletchleyite]

That would have been my prefered solution, yes. I also prefer the Aventra as a product.

I'm a Desiro fan as you probably well know (I don't dislike Aventras, though, and I'm looking forward to seeing what we will get on the south WCML), and I think the Class 700 is a good quality platform, but I think I'm probably with you on the interior layout.

They could even make the Brighton/airport passengers even happier by adding a couple of luggage racks and tables in some of the facing bays.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Well they accommodate passengers in wheelchairs and they are a minority compared to most passengers. So why not accommodate those who need the loo.

That can be a disability too, abet it's usually not a viable one.

Of course I don't know who has the larger numbers, people in wheelchairs or those who might suddenly need the loo.

Some wpuld say just use a station loo but not all stations have loos and some of those only have them when stcfed which isn't always so often, especially at weekends. I'm talking about other railway lines here as opposed to Crossrail.

I must admit that this has occurred to me more widely - is incontinence not considered a disability legally? It should be - the closure of near enough all the public toilets means that many elderly people are effectively housebound, or at the very least can't enjoy amenities like public parks. It's also gender discrimination, as it's much easier for a bloke to use a bush in such a situation.

(I speak as someone who has an annoyingly small bladder and always has had so no actual health issue - when I get old I'm going to have a real issue)

 

[yorksrob]

A lot of course depends on the availability of toilets at stations, and the frequency until the next train. For the Central Line it will only be a few minutes until the next train, and Amersham at least has the option of Chiltern (which many seem to choose over the Met Line where possible). Crossrail may well be testing the bounds of acceptability out a bit for certain journeys - time will tell, especially on late-night services.

Quite. I feel that this decision will come to be regretted quite quickly.

 

[cactustwirly]

The interior is completly unsuitable for the GWML.
People are comparing this to the tube, if the crossrail fares are reduced to the peanuts tube fares then fair enough.
If I'm paying £20 for a return to London, I don't expect to sit on a cattle truck of a train with hard longitundinal seats, for an hour.

Passengers on the GWML are facing a significant downgrade in facilities, when Crossrail is introduced in 2019

 

[Bletchleyite]

Exactly, the interior is completly unsuitable for the GWML.
People are comparing this to the tube, if the crossrail fares are reduced to the peanuts tube fares then fair enough.
If I'm paying £20 for a return to London, I don't expect to sit on a cattle truck of a train with hard longitundinal seats, for an hour.

Passengers on the GWML are facing a significant downgrade in facilities, when Crossrail is introduced in 2019

Who's going to use it from Reading, though? Won't Reading passengers still use the HSTs and change at Paddington? It doesn't even feature in my proposals to get the Reading commuters off the HSTs - that is predicated on a dedicated fast (no more than one stop plus Slough) 12-car EMU service being operated at least every 15 minutes.

Using it all the way from Reading would be like using LO from Watford Junction all the way in.

 

[cactustwirly]

Who's going to use it from Reading, though? Won't Reading passengers still use the HSTs and change at Paddington? It doesn't even feature in my proposals to get the Reading commuters off the HSTs - that is predicated on a dedicated fast (no more than one stop plus Slough) 12-car EMU service being operated at least every 15 minutes.

Using it all the way from Reading would be like using LO from Watford Junction all the way in.

Where did I say anything about Reading?

I was actually thinking of passengers from Twyford & Maidenhead.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Where did I say anything about Reading?

I was actually thinking of passengers from Twyford & Maidenhead.

They will still have HSTs and EMUs to Paddington on the Didcot (and Oxford, if they ever bother to electrify it) circuit, not just Crossrail.

 

[The Box Photter]

It has both.

The wide aisle is necessary. It works very, very well on these trains operating through the Thameslink core to allow people to move around a full-and-standing train to board and alight far more easily than any UK rolling stock before it. It also means people move down the aisle in a way they don't on other stock as there's enough space to do so comfortably. They work so much better - demonstrably so - than anything that went before for this purpose.

Apart from the matter of the heating conduit, they really are spot on for the Thameslink core.

The only thing that leads me to think is that maybe the Thameslink core shouldn't be used for services from quite so far away - possibly it should be more like Crossrail and just be, say, East Croydon to St Albans/Luton, with Brighton services going over to Southern and the reintroduction of BedPan services by EMT, both using something more conventional stock wise (and abandon the moving of GN services onto it). But people wouldn't like that either, would they? Thameslink is very popular.

It'd all be very nice to have end-doored low density EMUs running from Brighton and Cambridge on what are sort-of shortish IC services a bit like Norwich. But that is mutually exclusive from running them effectively through the Thameslink core as is planned.

But they don't move evenly along the train. They get on using the door they always use and then stand next to that door, blocking the aisle because they have to hang onto the central pole-dancing pole. They won't even move out of the way when someone comes along. Airport passengers drag their cases along the aisle and place them next to the seat they're sitting on, thus reducing the width of the aisle and making it difficult for passengers to move down the train.

The whole Thameslink thing is garbage. The trains are garbage, the seats are garbage, the heating/ventilation is garbage and the idea of cramming even more trains through the Core to more far-flung places is going to cause meltdowns on a regular basis.

 

[Busaholic]

I admit to not having read every post on this thread, so don't know whether anyone else has made the point, but bus travellers have been complaining about rock-hard seats for a long time, particularly since the introduction of 'hybrid' buses. The reason given in the case of buses is trying to keep the weight down , with all those batteries, but I don't believe a decent seat cushion need increase the overall weight by so much. Never mind wi-fi, bus priority measures, etc, if a passenger is grossly uncomfortable on a regular journey of more than a few minutes, and has an alternative mode of transport that is comfier, they may well take it. The rail industry should take note too.

 

[D60]

Picked up now by BBC Radio4, 'You and Yours', 12.15pm-1.00pm, featuring a contribution from the BBC's go-to travel correspondent, Simon Calder of the Independent, including mention of 'ironing boards'.. on now

 

[D60]

So Simon Calder sampled the seats on a Thameslink service, class 700, Bedford to Brighton, on the first off-peak service in the morning, sampling the seats and the journey, and speaking to passengers..
Train reported to be full and standing after Luton, and through the core..
Passengers uniformly unimpressed with the seats... too hard, too upright, too cramped, too narrow.. on journeys that can be upwards of 2 hours, he cited typical journeys may be Bedford to Gatwick, or Luton to Brighton...
And that anyone with any kind of back problems or other physical difficulties will likely have them exacerbated from anything other than the shortest of journeys in these seats..
He says the train is having to combine 3 roles... commuter service, airport shuttle, and metro train...
Mention also of the requirement to cram as many on board as possible, also 'stringent safety criteria', 'fire regs and crashworthyness standards'... and that all these factors have fed into the compromise that is the 'ironing board seating' that so many are now having to endure and are complaining about..

 

[Bletchleyite]

He says the train is having to combine 3 roles... commuter service, airport shuttle, and metro train...

This is the difficulty - a jack of all trades is often a master of none.

Here's an idea... could they have fitted fairly conventional 2+2 to a much larger First Class (say 4 full coaches out of 12 or 3 out of 8, or even more), with the rest of it laid out like the S-stock, but then shifted the First Class fares so they were barely more than Standard for the longer journeys but quite a bit higher than Standard for the shorter ones?

 

[physics34]

So Simon Calder sampled the seats on a Thameslink service, class 700, Bedford to Brighton, on the first off-peak service in the morning, sampling the seats and the journey, and speaking to passengers..
Train reported to be full and standing after Luton, and through the core..
Passengers uniformly unimpressed with the seats... too hard, too upright, too cramped, too narrow.. on journeys that can be upwards of 2 hours, he cited typical journeys may be Bedford to Gatwick, or Luton to Brighton...
And that anyone with any kind of back problems or other physical difficulties will likely have them exacerbated from anything other than the shortest of journeys in these seats..
He says the train is having to combine 3 roles... commuter service, airport shuttle, and metro train...
Mention also of the requirement to cram as many on board as possible, also 'stringent safety criteria', 'fire regs and crashworthyness standards'... and that all these factors have fed into the compromise that is the 'ironing board seating' that so many are now having to endure and are complaining about..

Still no excuse for lack of padding and legroom. They are just trying to fob people off

 

[physics34]

This is the difficulty - a jack of all trades is often a master of none.

Here's an idea... could they have fitted fairly conventional 2+2 to a much larger First Class (say 4 full coaches out of 12 or 3 out of 8, or even more), with the rest of it laid out like the S-stock, but then shifted the First Class fares so they were barely more than Standard for the longer journeys but quite a bit higher than Standard for the shorter ones?

That was a thought that entered my mind two. The 3 front and rear coaches of a 12 car to be 2x2 (comfortable) seating, the middle 6 to be longitudinal. Of course no trial was done!

 

[Bletchleyite]

That was a thought that entered my mind two. The 3 front and rear coaches of a 12 car to be 2x2 (comfortable) seating, the middle 6 to be longitudinal. Of course no trial was done!

A sort-of trial is done on the WCML a lot of the time, where if you get a formation with a 350/1 or /3 in it people gravitate to that to avoid 3+2 *if* there is a seat. Or on Southern, where you have the Electrostars with 2+2 tables in the end coaches and 3+2 mostly airline in the middle.

That being the case, it would probably work even without a fare differential.

 

[Domh245]

Here's an idea... could they have fitted fairly conventional 2+2 to a much larger First Class (say 4 full coaches out of 12 or 3 out of 8, or even more), with the rest of it laid out like the S-stock, but then shifted the First Class fares so they were barely more than Standard for the longer journeys but quite a bit higher than Standard for the shorter ones?

That would have required there to be distinct long and short distance 8 car subclasses - you wouldn't want to 'waste' 3 coaches of an 8 car train on first class for services around the Wimbledon loop and to Sevenoaks for example. Perhaps if they'd gone for this split subclass at an earlier stage we may well have seen the short distance fleet done with a mixed seating layout.

 

[abn444]

This is the difficulty - a jack of all trades is often a master of none.

Here's an idea... could they have fitted fairly conventional 2+2 to a much larger First Class (say 4 full coaches out of 12 or 3 out of 8, or even more), with the rest of it laid out like the S-stock, but then shifted the First Class fares so they were barely more than Standard for the longer journeys but quite a bit higher than Standard for the shorter ones?

That would have required there to be distinct long and short distance 8 car subclasses - you wouldn't want to 'waste' 3 coaches of an 8 car train on first class for services around the Wimbledon loop and to Sevenoaks for example. Perhaps if they'd gone for this split subclass at an earlier stage we may well have seen the short distance fleet done with a mixed seating layout.

Wouldn't a better idea be to divide them along subclass lines. Since the complaints seem to suggest the seating and layout is more based around being a 'metro' type service couldn't they leave the 700/0s (8-car) as they are since they'll mainly be operating the shorter more 'metro' and stopping services anyway from what I can gather. They could then upgrade the seating and layout on the 700/1s (12-car) since they'll be mostly operating the faster and longer distance services, have 4 more coaches anyway and although I don't know for sure (someone will probably tell me) might not be quite as crowded as the shorter distance stoppers anyway.

 

[physics34]

Wouldn't a better idea be to divide them along subclass lines. Since the complaints seem to suggest the seating and layout is more based around being a 'metro' type service couldn't they leave the 700/0s (8-car) as they are since they'll mainly be operating the shorter more 'metro' and stopping services anyway from what I can gather. They could then upgrade the seating and layout on the 700/1s (12-car) since they'll be mostly operating the faster and longer distance services, have 4 more coaches anyway and although I don't know for sure (someone will probably tell me) might not be quite as crowded as the shorter distance stoppers anyway.

100% agree. With good planning and a decent timetable this would be feasible. They managed to do it a while ago with Thameslink City Metro and City Flyer having different spec of 319s.