Interiors

I was banging on the other day about comfort in modern British trains; or, rather, the lack of it, and how specifications for new trains are, if anything, making things worse.


Someone commented that I was being overly harsh, and that the shiny new Pendolinos weren't as bad as all that (I had been comparing them unfavourably to the standards of comfort available in forty year old British Rail rolling stock, such as this Mk2 coach -- "the coach that launched InterCity"):



Let's start by having a look at the interiors of those shiny-bright Pendolinos.

The first thing I notice is how much more cramped they are. This is because they have high floors to fit traction motors underneath. And, because there's then no room left underneath to put air-conditioning equipment and toilet tanks, these have to go onto the roof, thus lowering the ceilings:


Compare the claustrophobia of that with the sense of high ceilings in British Rail's last carriage design, the Mk4. The Mk4 was actually less spacious than the Mk3 it replaced, since the sides slope inwards to allow it to tilt -- a tilting mechanism was never fitted, though, so these carriages have less shoulder-width for no reason. Nonetheless, it is vastly roomier than the Pendolino:


By comparison, the Pendolino feels as if it's designed for troglodytes:


There are all sorts of problems with the detailed design, too -- seats not aligning with windows has been referred to before, but it's worth just looking at some of this again. The person sitting in the blue chair won't have much of a view:


Although, to be fair, their view is vastly better than the poor sucker sitting in this wretched hell-hole:


If you get one of the rare "bay" seats you might think you're better off, but the position of the socket is completely dumb (try plugging something in without disturbing the person next to you), and there's an enormous ventilation grate protruding into the exact spot where your feet need to rest:


This is actually a frequent problem on British trains, although some designs do at least have a flat top so the vents can double-up as foot-rests:


Now let's have a look at the interiors of some of the "dreadful" trains replaced by these Pendolinos. And the ones I'm going to show you weren't even air-conditioned...

Let's start with a bog-standard Mk1, designed more than fifty years ago. Simple, open spaces, neatly defined, no clutter.


And look -- every single seat has a good view out of a window:


The views in compartment stock are just as good, although the leg-room in second class compartments was not overly generous:


But British Railways wasn't satisfied, so it developed the Mk2 carriage -- better seating, but still aligned with windows and with proper amounts of leg-room:


And the interior is still open, clean and welcoming -- and all the seats had proper headrests to enable you to relax totally:


I think I've proved my point, but I wanted to pause for a moment on the design of seat fabric. Modern liveries tend to be garish and unpleasant. Pre-War fabrics were more sombre but designed to last even as tastes changed. Some of the designs were commissioned from people like the great lesbian designer Enid Marx, or the famous artist Paul Nash:





Modern upholstery fabrics just aren't a patch on those.