HST refurbs : Great Western v Cross Country

[Justin Smith]

Fitting 10 or 12 more seats than originally fitted into a mark 3 carriage is an excellent way to increase capacity by almost an entire coach load per train, without having to shell out massive expense on inserting an extra carriage into each rake, incurring increased costs in track access charges, maintenance costs and fuel costs for a start, whilst at the same time journey times increase due to the added weight of an extra carriage. And that would even be assuming that there were enough spare carriages to facilitate this, which there aren't!

When I travel by train I want to get a seat, I don't feel that I need to be able to lounge out like I'm in my living room. Trains are there to get as many people as possible from A to B as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and by fitting a few extra seats into a carriage through the, to my eyes, negligible decrease in space between each seat and the one in front, more passengers have a good journey experience on a busy train as they get to sit down!

I'm 5' 11", and I travel by train wherever possible and when it is convenient for where I am going because it is more comfortable than the comparable journey by car, coach or even plane.

There is no train in this country where the seating plan has passengers crammed in like cattle, which might be the case if designers put maybe 100 seats in a carriage: Now THAT would be a lack of thought over passenger comfort. Putting 5 extra pairs of seats into a carriage is not the end of the world: The seating is more than adequate: I have a friend who has just returned from 2 months of travelling in Thailand, if you think that seating in a Crosscountry HST is a disgrace, then I suggest you take a look at Third class on Thai railways, and then endure an 8 hour journey, at an average speed of maybe 30mph, on one of those trains, then see how you feel.

I don't live in Thailand, I live in the UK and pay a hell of a lot more than what they do in Thailand to go by train, and that's excluding the tax subsidy. I've a bleedin' right to feel p****d off at a poxy 1" of leg room* on a long distance train.
As I said at the start, I may find the First GW HSTs a bit claustrophobic but over the last few days I've travelled on a few of them and I had at least 4" in front of my knees, and that's well worth having.

* The distance between the front of my knee and the rear of the seat in front.

 

[Geezertronic]

It's known as satire.
My website is full of it, plus opinionated, controversial views which cut through the b******t and don't just accept what I'm told by "the powers that be".

"Nobody would want to read that".

The site gets 3,000 visitors a day, every day.

Well I'm very happy that you have your own forum to write your own satire. Maybe you can quote what you post on there then? Because you don't back up your comments with quotes on this forum or thread...

I HIGHLY doubt that your Aerials and TV site get's 3,000 unique hits a day.

According to the information I have, there are 10 other domain names registered to 213.171.219.245 (which is an IIS server) so it's probably 3,000 across the 10 domains (1,457 unique vistors since July 09 for his domain)

 

[Royston Vasey]

It's known as satire..

With respect, that post was not satirical. Satire implies some form of wit or subtlety. Your post contained neither.

 

[Justin Smith]

Well I'm very happy that you have your own forum to write your own satire. Maybe you can quote what you post on there then? Because you don't back up your comments with quotes on this forum or thread...



According to the information I have, there are 10 other domain names registered to 213.171.219.245 (which is an IIS server) so it's probably 3,000 across the 10 domains (1,457 unique vistors since July 09 for his domain)

Each session is just that, no matter how many pages are viewed it still counts as one session, and, in fact, if the same person revisits the site within 20 minutes it still counts as the same session.
http://www.aerialsandtv.com/websitestats.html
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With respect, that post was not satirical. Satire implies some form of wit or subtlety. Your post contained neither.

Don't agree with you, I think it's well written and amusing. In fact I was so pleased with it I sent the URL to a few friends, they thought it funny too.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

I HIGHLY doubt that your Aerials and TV site get's 3,000 unique hits a day.

The stats on the above web page were for Jan 2009, 88,000 sessions. I admit it went down a bit after that, only 47,000 in Jun 2009, but it's gone up again now. Last month, July, it was 84,000. I wanted to update that page with the stats for Jul 2010 but the stats package I use (Matrix Stats) keeps timing out for that much data.



Interesting though this all is, it`s all off the point, which is that XC refurbed HSTs are cramped for long distance Inter City trains. They`re certainly more cramped than they were before, and, arguably, they`re the most cramped Inter City trains on the network at the moment, unless anyone knows an even worse one.....

 

[Geezertronic]

Each session is just that, no matter how many pages are viewed it still counts as one session, and, in fact, if the same person revisits the site within 20 minutes it still counts as the same session.
http://www.aerialsandtv.com/websitestats.html

Unfortunately for you, I am an IT Consultant who knows what he is talking about so there's no need for the dummies guide into web statistics.

The problem with statistics packages is that they very rarely give the true picture as far as actual hits is concerned. Your results could invariably contain hits from robots from search engines etc... rather than human visitors. Generally, a true stats package is a well written package that weeds out all of that crap and gives a proper value based on unique sessions rather than actually defaulting to the total number of hits. If you used Google Analytics or statcounter, your results could be vastly different.

In my line of business, this can be an in-house package or we can rely on the stats from either our Load Balancers or firewalls (which are about as reliable as badly written stats packages).

I could go on and on and bore you all to tears but since this is a railway thread and Justin will only want to prove me wrong I'll leave it at that

Interesting though this all is, it's all off the point, which is that XC refurbed HSTs are cramped for long distance Inter City trains. They're certainly more cramped than they were before, and, arguably, they're the most cramped Inter City trains on the network at the moment, unless anyone knows an even worse one.....

And that's your opinion which not everyone may want to agree with

 

[MCR247]

And that's your opinion which not everyone may want to agree with

Agreed

 

[devon_metro]

Interesting though this all is, it's all off the point, which is that XC refurbed HSTs are cramped for long distance Inter City trains. They're certainly more cramped than they were before, and, arguably, they're the most cramped Inter City trains on the network at the moment, unless anyone knows an even worse one.....

Ever travelled on a Voyager?

 

[Justin Smith]

Unfortunately for you, I am an IT Consultant who knows what he is talking about so there's no need for the dummies guide into web statistics.
The problem with statistics packages is that they very rarely give the true picture as far as actual hits is concerned. Your results could invariably contain hits from robots from search engines etc... rather than human visitors. Generally, a true stats package is a well written package that weeds out all of that crap and gives a proper value based on unique sessions rather than actually defaulting to the total number of hits. If you used Google Analytics or statcounter, your results could be vastly different.
In my line of business, this can be an in-house package or we can rely on the stats from either our Load Balancers or firewalls (which are about as reliable as badly written stats packages).
I could go on and on and bore you all to tears but since this is a railway thread and Justin will only want to prove me wrong I'll leave it at that

I'm more than happy to get as many visits from serach engine spiders as possible, for obvious reasons. You are correct that Google Analytics gives results about 60% of the Matrix Stats package. I still use Matrix because I always have done and I need to compare figures over the years. Also the Matrix package gives more easily accessible info on urls used to click through by vistors.
Interestingly we get quite a few visits via Google translate which I think hints at the fact many people find the site so useful they're prepared to put up with the less than perfect translation(s) ! I actually think that Google should rank sites more highly if frequently accessed from Google translate as it's an objective measue of how useful people think they are. Who knows, perhaps Google already do that ?
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And that's your opinion which not everyone may want to agree with

The last time I checked, distance/length is objective, it's not an opinion, that's why I find some of the responses on this thread so annoying.
I also find it incredibly annoying that these TOCs who are reducing lagroom aren't being taken to task for doing so. When they boast about providing more seats, by simply cramming more seat in, I feel like throwing up.
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Ever travelled on a Voyager?

You're right, Voyagers are possibly as bad as XC refurbed HSTs, but I always try to get the extra legroom seats in the quiet coach, and, in fact, managed it nearly every time on my last Railrover. Thus I didn't check how much room I had in front of my knees in a standard seat, I'll do so the next time I'm on one.

 

[ralphchadkirk]

Quite frankly, looking at your code and running it through a validator, I am surprised Google have even looked at it.
The fact you are asking users to resize their resolutions to view the site properly is laughable! Any web developer worth anything knows that you change your site to make it work, not the other way round.

I actually think that Google should rank sites more highly if frequently accessed from Google translate as it's an objective measue of how useful people think they are, Who knows, perhaps Google already do that ?

Nobody knows.

 

[Justin Smith]

Quite frankly, looking at your code and running it through a validator, I am surprised Google have even looked at it.
The fact you are asking users to resize their resolutions to view the site properly is laughable! Any web developer worth anything knows that you change your site to make it work, not the other way round.

Nobody knows.

.

I`ve done a bit of research on this and you get different answers from different people about the importance of "code". To be frank I don`t really know what "code" is. I`m only interetsed in aerials, and trying to write well, and hopefully, amusingly. The number of visitors we get hints at the fact that I have managed to do that, and that "code" isn`t that important.

 

[MCR247]

I also find it incredibly annoying that these TOCs who are reducing lagroom aren't being taken to task for doing so. When they boast about providing more seats, by simply cramming more seat in, I feel like throwing up.

Well how else do they provide more seats when we have the idiotic DfT who are opposed to anything that makes sense, and would make the journey more pleasant.

If they didn't put more seats in don't you think there would be loads of people complaining that people sitting down had loads of legroom and there was loads standing

The only thing that can be done to solve this is to make certain busy trains reservation only, and when there isn't any seats left there is a set amount of standing seats

 

[ainsworth74]

The last time I checked, distance/length is objective, it's not an opinion

Distance/length is an objective measure, however the effect that has on someone is subjective. I'm 6'3" if I have an 1" of space in front of my Knees I'm completely happy. You obviously are not happy with 1" of space. That is your opinion, my opinion of 1" of space is different.

 

[Geezertronic]

Distance/length is an objective measure, however the effect that has on someone is subjective. I'm 6'3" if I have an 1" of space in front of my Knees I'm completely happy. You obviously are not happy with 1" of space. That is your opinion, my opinion of 1" of space is different.

I guess some people are always after more inches

 

[ainsworth74]

I guess some people are always after more inches

*groan*

 

[jon0844]

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/aerialsandtv.com#

 

[Geezertronic]

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/aerialsandtv.com#

Aerials & TV aka ATV

The site logo needs a bit of work so I've got a new logo for the site

 

[Justin Smith]

Distance/length is an objective measure, however the effect that has on someone is subjective. I'm 6'3" if I have an 1" of space in front of my Knees I'm completely happy. You obviously are not happy with 1" of space. That is your opinion, my opinion of 1" of space is different.

If that was one inch of space when sat "normally" that'd be one thing. If it's one inch of space only if your arse is wedged tight up against the seat back, that's another. But we're going round in circles here, if passengers are quite happy with such paltry amounts of leg room why did BR bother to provide what I would consider a reasonable amount of leg room ? Somone said earlier that was because they had to make more of an effort to encourage passengers, the implication being that these days they don't have to.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the railways got more tax subsidy (i.e. money from me, and others) now than they ever did under BR, yet they give me a worse "product". How can that be right ? Something`s deeply wrong somewhere.

 

[devon_metro]

BR didn't provide lots of legroom. 4 people around a table doesn't leave you with much space to stretch, plus the airline seats were always quite cramped, certainly the FGW HSts are a massive improvement in legroom, would imagine XC is also an improvement.

 

[Justin Smith]

BR didn't provide lots of legroom. 4 people around a table doesn't leave you with much space to stretch, plus the airline seats were always quite cramped, certainly the FGW HSts are a massive improvement in legroom, would imagine XC is also an improvement.

No, the original BR airline seats definitely gave me more than one inch of legroom, as did the old Virgin XC HST coaches.
I admit, as I said in the initial post, that First GW have significantly more leg room than the XC seats though, I can`t really complain about that particular aspect of them.

 

[tbtc]

Its odd, but the seats seemed so much bigger when I was a small boy. Now I'm a grown up there's much less space for me (and my tinfoil hat)

 

[MCR247]

Justin Smith, can you not just accept that if trains are getting busier what else can you do? Have them on the roof?

 

[Greenback]

I don't think he can. He will continue until either we've all died of boredom/old age, or until everyone agrees with everything he says...I'll start it off...

Justin, you are quite right. It's nothing short of a national disgrace. It's a wonder anyone travels by train, given the shocking leg room on XC HST's.

How's that?

 

[jon0844]

The bit about the differing 1-inch legroom confused me. To me, 1-inch of legroom is when I'm sitting normally. If I'm somehow forcing myself back into the seat, then I'm not exactly sitting, and how long am I realistically going to keep pushing myself back?

And if I was doing that, I'd expect it was because there was no room and I was touching the seat in front.

I am pretty sure that I can sit exactly as I want and still have an inch or more room.

But, given the priority seats on many trains, I presume the legroom differs? I'd also think that in an airline seat, you can have more restricted room as there's nothing else to get in your way - thus reserving some extra space for tables where you'd have legs hitting and that wouldn't be acceptable.

Given some more restrictions, or people having to go on the roof (or more likely not travel at all, or at best stand) then there's really no problem.

I suppose all the people who disagree are also part of the thousands of unique visitors that visit that website every day!

 

[Justin Smith]

Justin Smith, can you not just accept that if trains are getting busier what else can you do? Have them on the roof?

Putting more seats on a train by cramming more seats in is not a "no cost option", i.e. there is a downside, less leg room. So if they can't afford to put any more carriages on (why when they're getting so much more subsidy than BR ? ) then leave the seats as they are, or, if they really must increase the number, do what First GW did. They've managed to fit in more seats but still with an acceptable amount of leg room.
Having said all this, I don't see why they need to fit more seats at all if the side effect is more cramped seating. But, as far as I'm aware, there's no "performance measure" for seat pitch, whereas there probably is a "performance measure" for number of standing passengers.
I have to say I spent a week travelling all over the Midlands on a couple of Railrovers, and I always got a seat, so why are they trying to cram more in to avoid an event which only happens on perhaps 1 to 2% of journies ?

 

[Greenback]

Are you really denying there are any capacity issues on the whole network based on one week in the Midlands? have you tried a peak time HST from Paddington to Reading and Swindon? A Voyager between Bristol and Exeter? Or an EC Sunday afternoon HST?

I along with many other people on this forum, have experienced gross overcrowding on all of these routes on more than one occasion. Buy, hey, I once spent a fortnight in the North of Scotland, and none of the trains I used were more than 50% full at the most, so overcrowding and people having to stand must be a myth. And as for all those accounts of people being physically unable to board a train, well, they must be made up.

 

[MCR247]

Putting more seats on a train by cramming more seats in is not a "no cost option", i.e. there is a downside, less leg room. So if they can't afford to put any more carriages on (why when they're getting so much more subsidy than BR ? ) then leave the seats as they are, or, if they really must increase the number, do what First GW did. They've managed to fit in more seats but still with an acceptable amount of leg room.
Having said all this, I don't see why they need to fit more seats at all if the side effect is more cramped seating. But, as far as I'm aware, there's no "performance measure" for seat pitch, whereas there probably is a "performance measure" for number of standing passengers.
I have to say I spent a week travelling all over the Midlands on a couple of Railrovers, and I always got a seat, so why are they trying to cram more in to avoid an event which only happens on perhaps 1 to 2% of journies ?

An event that happens on 1 to 2% of journeys? No you are taking the p****. So are you saying that all of the standing commuters don't exist? What about me? Am telling a lie about standing on a voyager? Are the people that have to sit on the luggage racks lying? Is Greenback? All because you spent a week travelling the midlands and I always got a seat
On the trains you went on, was anyone ever standing?

Where do these new carriages come from? Telll me? Oh, right, there isn't any, we only have MK3 sleepers left. But we can't fit seats because the windows can't be made like normal MK3s. And if we left them we'd have another rant from you saying 3% of the people didn't have a window etc

 

[Geezertronic]

So if they can't afford to put any more carriages on (why when they're getting so much more subsidy than BR ? )...

I am no expert as I am sure my posts prove but are you looking at the subsidy as pure money or as a percentage? I would have thought that it was a given that there is a lot more money floating around than in the BR days but that could be put down to inflation etc..?

Everything appears to have been cheaper in the days of BR (or when I was a lad anyway), now everything seems to be more expensive.

 

[sprinterguy]

Crosscountry are serving a different, long distance leisure, market compared to the purpose of FGWs' high density HSTs; which are supposed to be used on fast regional commuter services. Crosscountry had to find a way to increase capacity on their trains without removing all the table bays as they cater for more family groups and larger parties travelling journeys of 3 hours plus, whereas the FGW high density seating arrangement is aimed principally at commuters travelling individually. So Crosscountry had to plan their HSTs around train formations that would allow the HSTs to match Voyager timings, increasing the number of seats to give a reasonable step up in capacity, retaining a number of table bays to cater for family groups and large parties, and also work with the rolling stock that was available. That's a lot of constraints on the design, and I think Crosscountry have worked around these constraints admirably.

There are no spare carriages available to lengthen the trains, which would anyway slow down journey times and up costs, and at any rate, what rolling stock goes where is largely decided by the DfT: The TOCs have very little say in what cards are dealt to them as regards rolling stock, there is not a free market for the transfer of rolling stock between operators.

Crosscountry have succeeded in pleasing the greater number of people (by adding more seats) for a greater amount of time (by reducing overcrowding by adding extra capacity) for the type of service they operate, as have FGW in a different market with different demands. That a few people are upset that there isn't as much space as there was "in the good old days" is a negligible negative impact: Most people are just looking to get a seat.

I would be interested to know if the 82 seats in a XC mk3 standard coach are actually any more or less cramped than the maximum 64 seats in an XC Voyager standard coach, given that the saloon length in a mark 3 is considerably longer than in a Voyager.

 

[Greenback]

A very good post sprinterguy, though it's probably all in vain as Justin seems tor efuse to accept anyone else's view is valid.

 

[Drsatan]

Crosscountry are serving a different, long distance leisure, market compared to the purpose of FGWs' high density HSTs; which are supposed to be used on fast regional commuter services.

There are no spare carriages available to lengthen the trains, which would anyway slow down journey times and up costs, and at any rate, what rolling stock goes where is largely decided by the DfT: The TOCs have very little say in what cards are dealt to them as regards rolling stock,

XC services are extensively used by business travelers as well due to the destinations they serve. For instance, someone traveling from Bristol TM to a business meeting Edinburgh might use XC to avoid traveling via London. There appear to be quite a few business travelers between Birmingham NS and Leeds as well since both cities are major employment centres.

I read somewhere that the Voyager production line could be reopened to build centre cars for the Voyagers, but these would be unpowered since the Cummins engines they'd require have since gone out of production. Not only would journey times be lengthened (a seven car Voyager with two unpowered cars might have problems ascending Dainton bank) but the ROSCOs wouldn't fund the cost of building them. This is due to an uncertain rolling stock market caused by the absence of a national rolling stock construction/cascade program.