Great Western Coffee Shop

According to the Daily Telegraph today, Go Ahead and Angel Trains are studying plans to reduce the number of seats in their trains so that more people can stand up. 

Katy Taylor, Head of Strategy at Go Ahead, is reported as saying "I often stand on the train because you’ve been sitting in the office all day and it’s quite nice to stand" .............peoples' journey habits are going to change, but crises are the opportunity to change things,..........we are going to have work hard to get customers to come back to public transport…..............we need to do everything we can to make it more compelling for them"


The costs of converting existing rolling stock is estimated to be £50 - 150K per coach, this would "save millions" as new "standing" cattle trucks coaches would be £1.5M - 2.5M each.

Well, I am sure these proposals will have people flocking back to the trains !!

Yes, I am sure this is exactly what the authors of the White Paper had in mind as we head into the glorious Great British Railways era of comfy seating for all  ;D

Well it would solve the issue with the cushions being too hard.   ;D

No ... it's "removing the seats that people find uncomfortable" - a positive step :D

When you're having a day that seems to have entered a Monty Python sketch

You can interpret this quote from Williams/Shapps in more than one way:

I'm not convinced anyone will want to know what was really behind this, before it turned into an excuse for jokes. However, here goes anyway. The same story has now surfaced on Rail Professional (https://www.railpro.co.uk/news/the-post-covid-railway-carriage-go-ahead-and-angel-trains-plan-flexible-spaces-for-commuter-and-leisure-travellers):


The article has more pictures that timeshare. The underlying mindset appears to be that so few passengers will come back to peak services that there will be lots of unused seats that can be taken out, and replaced with a variety of other things, in a desperate attempt to entice a few more to travel. This time there's nothing about standing - just this:

Presumably that promoted a question such as "will anyone want to perch - basically stand - for a whole journey?". The answer to that can then be quoted without the question - it's an old (journalists') trick bit evidently it still works.

Some buses and (I think) trains do already have perches, but I wonder if they really do intend them to be for laptop users. If so I'd have asked how you'd manage to hold on, and hold their laptop in place, while using it - it does sound like the idea of someone who doesn't spend much time on moving trains!

By the way this Katy Taylor is now working her notice at Go Ahead. and will start at Southern Water in August in a similar role.

Those tables will need to be at least big enough for two laptops, otherwise there will be perpetual bun fights!

Normally, you'd remove seats to increase capacity. You can fit more standing passengers than seated ones. TfL are the masters of this.

Perhaps we could start by ripping out the 3+2 seating on some trains and replace with 2+2 with a gap between each seat of say 4-5cm.

I see they have called these "concepts for the future". So they are just thinking aloud (i.e. in public), or even playing at being college students doing a design project. I can't see why they would urgently need to do anything that meant spending money - if it's going to be their decision anyway, which it probably isn't.

The DfT using them simply to do their dirty work & test public reaction before introducing said olicy. We all know the DfT drill by now

"in a similar role"..................................I'm panic buying vast quantities of bottled water before then !!

And an IBC to fill with water..
And a few thousand water chlorination tablets, each to treat one liter, and a few dozen each to treat 20 liters.
And some plastic jerry cans.
And a slow gravity microfilter, and some spare filters.

https://evaq8.co.uk/Water-Purification/ (https://evaq8.co.uk/Water-Purification/)

And also
https://www.waterfilterman.co.uk/doulton-water-filters/649-doulton-gravity-water-filter-system-with-super-sterasyl-candles-w9361122-0804066831413.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwna2FBhDPARIsACAEc_Vl85DK0HHLq-Uo47QzW2H1CdSl-9bTGzyz-FvBXJPhZKN8rAuSw2IaAlcLEALw_wcB (https://www.waterfilterman.co.uk/doulton-water-filters/649-doulton-gravity-water-filter-system-with-super-sterasyl-candles-w9361122-0804066831413.html?gclid=Cj0KCQjwna2FBhDPARIsACAEc_Vl85DK0HHLq-Uo47QzW2H1CdSl-9bTGzyz-FvBXJPhZKN8rAuSw2IaAlcLEALw_wcB)

Joking aside (if I'm going to be able to do that in this thread!), there is a lot to be said for dynamic passenger accommodation that can change to meet requirements.   Nothing new - it's been around since early tram days where the seat backs pivoted over so that everyone could face the direction of travel.    How you achieve it simply (reversible within turn around time at the end of a journey) so that you have [mobile-office/standing-space/cycle-racks/sleepers/restaurant] is something I'll leave to the clever technical people.

Moving even further from joking - to Belfort, to be precise - SNCF Voyageurs and Alstom unveiled their next-gen TGV (https://www.alstom.com/press-releases-news/2021/5/sncf-voyageurs-alstom-launch-tgv-m-power-car) (actually only a power car, the rest was still inside a computer:

So there you go - modularity (and modulability) are evidently the thing these days.

You might quibble about some things ... like whether that nose really is aerodynamic, and as to pretty! Or the "unprecedented" status of being able to adjust the number of carriages according to precise market needs.

I need to remember that when I was swinging those buckeye couplers and going under to hook on and hook off brake pipes and steam heat pipes, I was, in fact increasing modularity