On 14 May, 09:47, "Recliner" wrote:
"peter" wrote in message





I travelled on one today, and was not impressed.

The good points - bright lighting, smoother ride, more standing space

But the downside of the last point is less seating space. *The seating
follows the current fashion of being all sideways, which personally I
detest. *Crabs evolved to travel sideways, humans go forwards.
Another drawback is that is much harder to see out of the window. Now
I know that isn't an issue on the Victoria Line, which is all
underground, but on other lines which do have surface sections it adds
to the frustrations of travel. *The seats themselves seem to have been
designed for midgets, with inadequate depth for an average sized adult
male and very thin upholstery.

Some tube journeys can be quite long - I have a regular trip between
Totteridge and Whetstone and South Wimbledon which takes one hour ten
minutes, and I wish transport chiefs would pay a little more attention
to the comfort of such passengers rather than basing the designs on
the needs of short distance commuters only.

Of course, most Victoria Line journeys are short, and all are entirely
underground. The 2009 stock can't operate on any other Tube line, and
nor will it be the basis for the replacement Piccadilly Line stock
(which is likely to be based on the current Northern Line stock). I
think the limited, harder, mainly/entirely longitudinal seating will be
more of a problem with the new S stock, which will often be used for
much longer journeys on the District and Met lines.

I rode on a 2009 train this morning between Vauxhall and Euston, which
surprised me (it must have been about midday). I took a couple of
photos just after getting off at Euston (apologies for noise/blur):
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...t_Euston2..jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index..._at_Euston.jpg

Is there a deep-level stock in development with full articulation,
because I was expecting the 2009s to be articulated like the S stock.
Still, the train seemed spacious inside, though the windows seemed to
be very narrow, though on reflection, not much narrower than 1996/1995
trains? PA announcements included which side of the train the doors
would open on approach to each station which seems quite handy. I
think I heard shades of the high-pitched "Electrostar Whir" as I like
to call it upon acceleration - I've got used to it having ridden the
ELL class 378s so many times since re-opening!