With the coming of the revamped timetable for South West Trains, I've
just experienced what I believe to be a Desiro on the Hounslow loop.
Seems like a nice interior, but we'll see how it puts up with the
vandals. The loo designed to accommodate the requirements of disabled
people was out of use. Ride quality was odd compared to the ?317s used
previously - it seemed to be far more badly affected by track
imperfections that the 317: it didn't jolt, but swayed and rolled more
like being on board ship.

Anyway, the odd thing was that I was on an eight car train, but only
the doors in the front four cars were enabled at Wandsworth Town,
Barnes, Kew Bridge and Isleworth on the way out from Waterloo. The
reason given was short platforms - or in other words, as the platforms
hadn't changed, the train was too long for the platforms. This
prompts several questions:

1) How come it wasn't possible to lock out only the rearmost car's
doors? This would be more useful.

2) Surely the platform lengths were known - so why build trains that
are too long, and don't easily accommodate themselves to short
platforms by locking out the minimum number of doors necessary?

3) How long are these trains compared to the older (?317) stock (or
even the slam door stock)?

4) I noticed that the resignalling work a few years ago seemed to move
the stop point (the 8 car/4 car black signs with white 4 or 8 numeral)
on several platforms, wasting some of the platform length - why was
this? Surely it makes sense to use all the platform available?

5) What will the long term solution be? I'm not at all sure the
Isleworth platform can be extended easily or cheaply, as the station
fills the space between two bridges - it looks like major bridge
rebuilding/widening would be needed. Barnes has only recently been
resignalled and had platform work so I'm surprised it's too short.

Thanks in advance for any enlightenment.

Regards,

Sid