Best seats in the house!?

[ChristopherJ]

Saw these inside the motor car of a refurbed 442 this evening. Probably not the more popular choice of seat?

...and you thought those bendy west coast things were bad with their small windows and non-aligning seats?

Four words: Modern, Dynamic, Thrusting Railway. :roll:

 

[Peter Mugridge]

There are seats exactly like that on the 390s and immediately adjacent are luggage stacks fitted across windows...

 

[fgwrich]

Fantastic View!

Mind you, BR does has an excuse of this. That's in the non first class end of the MLC, which the coach itself is built around the design confines of a Mk3 Gen Van, a coach not really designed to take various additions of windows. Although i was rather supprissed when Wolverton managed to cut a few more out during the conversion of the Buffet Car & Snug area into the extended First Class section, presumably the coach has been reinforced?

Southern Electric Group
Development work to the structure of the BR Mk3 coach undertaken for Iarnrod Éireann, specifically the floor being able to take greater weights (to permit a generator to be installed) and power operated plug doors, provided the key to the evolution of the Mk3 design that became the class 442 EMU.

(You can see one of the Irish Mk3 Gen Van / EGVs in this link: http://www.drimnagh-road.com/180112dundalk.htm)

Now, those awful chapman seats in the 442s - That's a different matter, Don't get me started on those!

 

[RAGNARØKR]

Saw these inside the motor car of a refurbed 442 this evening. Probably not the more popular choice of seat?

...and you thought those bendy west coast things were bad with their small windows and non-aligning seats?

Four words: Modern, Dynamic, Thrusting Railway. :roll:

I have a rooted object to this kind of seating layout but some people these days spend the whole journey looking at a screen so the lack of distracting reflections is an advantage here.

They become a problem when the reservation system is unable to identify them as blind seats and a window seat is not.

 

[swt_passenger]

...Although i was rather supprised when Wolverton managed to cut a few more out during the conversion of the Buffet Car & Snug area into the extended First Class section, presumably the coach has been reinforced?

No reason to be surprised really, they'd already had some additional windows put in during an earlier modification period.

Haven't FGW's recent HST mods resulted in additional windows being cut into Mk3 bodies easily? (There were pics in one of the mags.) Seems to me that the known problem with putting normal size windows into the sleepers has been read across to other designs unnecessarily.

 

[jopsuk]

cutting bigger windows into a buffet car is a different matter to cutting bigger windows in the 442 maotor car- the stresses on the two are really quite different

 

[Peter Mugridge]

The buffet cars, when built, used the basic day carriage structure with window areas blanked off didn't they?

So this is totally different to the ( failed! ) attempt to cut extra windows into a Sleeper carriage.

 

[Temple Meads]

Considering most passengers just seem to read, text, talk very loudly on mobiles, drink alcohol, eat smelly food, listen to loud iPods or use a laptop, do modern passengers even need windows? Modern in train PA's say where the train is, so windows could be got rid of altogether.

PS: the above post is not serious.

 

[dstrat]

You get the same thing on the 395s where the panto is above - nice one. With a little bit of thought they could have perhaps made the area a bike or luggage space but I guess common sense flew out the window by the brains that designed it.

 

[RAGNARØKR]

Considering most passengers just seem to read, text, talk very loudly on mobiles, drink alcohol, eat smelly food, listen to loud iPods or use a laptop, do modern passengers even need windows? Modern in train PA's say where the train is, so windows could be got rid of altogether.

PS: the above post is not serious.

There are the VOLO coaches with seat-back entertainment so it is not such a daft idea, and there were cinema coaches in the 1950s which did the same thing, in their way.

 

[D365]

There are the VOLO coaches with seat-back entertainment so it is not such a daft idea, and there were cinema coaches in the 1950s which did the same thing, in their way.

Why do planes need windows? Coaches? Buses? Interesting idea, but I don't reckon it would be worth it. I enjoy sitting with my music and watching the world go by... Wouldn't that startle passengers on high-speed lines like my ECML, with 125mph trains thwonking by blindly in the opposite direction?

P.S. Also not serious. When I say no windows, I still mean one at the cab. Unless someone's asking for driverless buses!