Ideally for long-distance travel at least half of the overall seating on the train should be arranged 'face to face' around tables which are correctly aligned to clean windows. Because not all groups will contain exactly 4 passengers there is also a need for some 1+3 seating and even traditional compartment-style 4+0 seating with a corridor along the carriage side. The intention should be to encourage (family)(social) groups, for whom sitting together as a group around a table (or several tables) is part of what makes the journey so enjoyable.
There should also be some proper compartments for business people (eg: company directors with secretaries / managers / lawyers) as the privacy offered by compartments means that they can use their travelling time for business purposes without disturbing other passengers. This is especially important where they are discussing confidential matters for which they may even want to reserve a complete compartment. However, not all passengers want to sit at tables facing total strangers so some 'airline' seating is desirable - providing the seat pitch gives sufficient leg room.
New, Faster, More Frequent Trains = More Passengers!
Recently introduced for InterCity 'Cross-Country' express services are a fleet of tilting and non-tilting diesel multiple units. These new trains have a mixture of 'at table' and 'aircraft' seats, computer powerpoints throughout standard and first class, an electronic seat reservation system and headphone sockets for the at-seat entertainment system. The aircraft seats feature fold-down tables in the backs of the seat in front.
These trains operate on the regional "Cross-Country" InterCity services which generally avoid London and instead use Birmingham as a 'hub'.
In March 2003 enough of the new trains had been delivered and brought into daily use for the timetables to be recast to take advantage of their greater acceleration (and higher speeds) by providing more frequent, faster services. This was part of a long-term plan which over 10 years was aiming for a 50% increase in passenger numbers.
Much to the train operator's surprise (but not passengers) the faster, more frequent services were so popular that patronage rose 24% in the first month and 40% in the second month. So the 10 year plan was almost achieved in just 3 months! - and that was with the unpopular airline-style ticketing system which encourages advance booking & discourages passengers from just travelling 'on-spec' ('turn up and travel').
Regrettably it is possible to have too much of a 'good thing'. With either just four or five carriages each the new trains are considerably shorter than the trains they replaced and even at higher frequencies severe overcrowding became an issue. (Some critics have suggested that the trains were too short and should have been at least 7 carriages long from the outset). Furthermore the infrastructure (the tracks & signalling system) could not cope with the new timetables (too many trains causing congestion) so services have had to be thinned out.
Nevertheless, despite these problems, and the Department for Transport enforcing other changes to services operated by these trains (changes which in many cases de facto made services less attractive) the 10 year plan proved widely conservative with passenger numbers nearly doubling - from 11 million to 21 million passengers per anum. It is a matter for conjecture whether this figure would have been even higher - if the trains had been longer from the outset, if the railway infrastructure had been looked after properly (a comment which includes with an aim of meeting train operating requirements) and if no routes had been forcibly handed over to other operators - some of whose trains are more suited to suburban than InterCity style journeys.
Examples from European trains.
The first pictures of this European selection come from the 186mph "Eurostar" trains which were designed for services between Britain and France / Belgium via the Channel Tunnel but also operate some internal services within Britain and France.
As with the British trains seen above they include some at-table seating even in carriages with predominately aircraft seats; this is so that everyone will be seated 'inwards' - otherwise some seats would face the carriage end walls.
Many people say that these trains are the most comfortable and offer the best ride quality of any train currently in use in Britain.
The foot rests are only offered to passengers who have 'airline' style seating. Also note the partially lowered window blind & the litter bin (on the carriage wall at foot level) and that to ease access into the seat (as well as offer greater passenger choice) the armrests can be fully raised - the centre armrest was partially raised for this photograph.
On-train refreshment facilities are looked at on the
On-train Refreshment Facilities, Double-Deck Trains, & Taking Bicycles On Trains page.
A nice touch are the fold-up table flaps which make it easier to 'get into' the seats.
Derivatives of the TGV include the "Thalys" trains which operate international services linking cities in Belgium, France, Holland, Germany and Switzerland and the "Eurostar" trains which were originally intended for London Brussels / Paris Chunnel Tunnel services but have also been used on internal services within Britain and France.
The sucess of the TGV is such that over 250,000 pssengers a day travel at 300km/h on the TGV trains and their derivatives (Thalys and Eurostar). On 28th November 2003 the French National Railways (SNCF) celebrated carrying their billionth TGV passenger since services first began back in 1981. Despite the high speed this has been acheived with a remarkable safety record with there having been just a handful of minor mishaps.
In part their safety record is attributed to the TGV family of trains being articulated. Articulated suspension has the effect of 'hinging' the carraiges to each other, giving greater stability at high speed. In the rare occurance of a derailment the trains tend to remain in a straight line and upright. These benefits were also found with the British Advanced Passenger Train (APT) when it deariled in April 1980.
On many routes the introduction of the TGV has led to significant reductions in numbers of passengers travelling by air - for instance: on the Paris / Lyon route where TGV Duplex (double deck) trains run at 30 minute intervals - fewer short-haul flights actually benefits air travellers because it frees up airport capacity for longer distance trans-continental flights. Many people would agree that we should be following the same philosophy here in Britain.
In April 2007 a TGV train created a new high speed record for a train on conventional rails, reaching 574.8km/h (356mph) and significantly overtaking the previous TGV speed record of 515km/h (320mph), which had been set in 1990. The new record was set on a recently built route between Paris and the eastern city of Strasbourg where regular services will see TGV trains cruising at the slightly higher speed of 320km/h. The train used for this speed attempt had been specially modified, with larger wheels on the two power carraiges and just three intermediate (double deck) carriages. In addition, to help with the record speed attempt the overhead electric power supply had been specially uprated from the usual 25,000v ac to 31,000v ac.
By way of contrast the absolute train speed record is 581km/h (361mph), this having been set by a Japanese Maglev (magnetic levitation) in 2003.
Also not shown are the paper leaflets which the train crew leave on seats throughout the train. These give excellent information on the individual journey, stations served, platform numbers, arrival & departure times and details of mainline & local railway (and sometimes even bus) onward connections. Of course this is how integrated transport systems *should* work - this being the diametric opposite of how things are done in Britain, where instead all the public transports compete against each other - as well as private motoring.
On some designs of ICE train passengers can sit behind the driver and watch where the train is going! This is not shown here - although there are images on (link to come) page. (link to an external site which opens in a new window)
Switzerland is renown for its beautiful scenery and what better way to see it than by travelling in an observation coach? Apart from special trains aimed at the leisure industry a handful of 'ordinary' passenger trains also feature these special carriages - albeit for first class passengers only. The views are spectacular (even with a motorway - and even better without!).
As the view above right shows passengers sit "high up" within the carriage - in this view the floor slopes down towards the internal end door. Naturally the carriage is air-conditioned, but to reduce the intensity of the sunlight on really bright sunny days passengers can also lower internal window blinds.(image above left sourced from promotional leaflet).
Examples from Beyond Europe.
Outside of Europe high speed trains operate in just a handful of countries - these being the USA, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Although Australia uses some trains which are based on the British High Speed Train they travel at considerably lower speeds which cannot be classified as "high speed". The situation has been exasperated after the trains were forced to reduce their speeds even further because road users were causing accidents by jumping level crossings as the trains approached.
Japan's Shinkansen high speed trains are legendary. Their punctuality puts most other railway systems to shame. Partly this will be because the Japanese know that it is often cheaper to spend a little more money with the initial investment and use better quality components (eg: heavier duty track (rails)) as well as a certain amount of duplication so that if a component does give trouble its duties can be carried out by other components also on the train. Many Japanese railways are not profitable at the farebox but through clever marketing and things such as income from real estate (eg: shopping centres at stations) the overall businesses are able to maintain their financial integrity.
Both images sourced from train manufacturer's promotional material.
Such is their popularity that in an attempt to carry all the intending passengers on a few commuter routes the Japanese also use double deck (bi-level) Shinkansen trains, which even with very high density 3+3 seating still often run at 200% capacity! (ie: as many passengers standing as sitting).
In the USA the high speed trains operate on the North East Corridor which links Boston Mass. with Washington, DC via a heavily populated string of conurbations including Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia, New York City, the Connecticut coast and Providence. Known as the Acela the American high speed train reaches speeds of up to 150 mph (approx 240 km/h), which is very commendable (and betters our situation here in Britain) considering that unlike many of the other very high speed trains seen on this page the Acela travels at these speeds on pre-existing infrastructure. Because much of the route is very twisting the Acela trains are equipped with "tilting" technology. (Tilting trains are looked at in the next section, below.) Indeed the line is so curvaceous that trains travelling between New York and Boston travel the equivalent of over 11 full circles!
Acela Express train 2175 drifting through a curve south of Back Bay, Boston. Photo courtesy of Clem Tillier.
For more information on the Acela train visit these websites http://www.railfaneurope.net/tgv/acela.html (hosted in Italy) http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/acela.html (hosted in California) (links to external sites which open in new windows).
Elsewhere in the USA very high speed trains have been investigated in Florida and for use along the west coast to link the cities of Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) with San Diego at the Mexican border, travelling via Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc however so far these plans have not come to fruition.
Tilting trains.So far most of very high speed trains (eg: French TGV, German ICE, Japanese Bullet Train etc,.) have achieved their very high speeds by means of brand new specially designed dedicated tracks which, to coax the maximum performance from the trains, feature gentle gradients and curves. On 'ordinary' tracks these trains are usually restricted to the same speeds as conventional trains. However, these new lines are expensive to construct and can only be justified on the busiest of routes. Even then, in countries such as Britain the investment has not been made (with the notable exception of the prestigious Channel Tunnel Eurostar route which has only very limited benefit for most British people) because of a lack of will to do so and instead the policy has been / still is to (half-heartedly) upgrade existing tracks. Meanwhile, in countries such as France and Germany, which have / are still building new lines they are now reaching a point where the most profitable / major routes are either built or soon will be; and whilst there is plenty of demand for even more new lines the routes involved will be less profitable plus increasing environmental concerns are putting up the construction costs. As a result these countries too are looking at their existing networks to see where higher speeds could be won through upgrading, perhaps with just short new sections of track at the most severe locations. The principal restraining factor that stops trains travelling faster is the speed at which they can take bends. Whilst 'banking' the track (like motor racing circuits) helps, the 'hub' of the problem is that centrifugal forces mean that passengers will feel discomfort on the bends. With 'tilting' trains that lean into the curve a solution has been found that enables bends to be taken at up to 25% faster than with conventional trains. Upgrading the track for tilting trains is far cheaper than building new high speed lines, plus there is less wear on the rail tracks, which translates into cheaper maintenance. Britain was amongst the first nations to investigate tilting trains - originally with a gas-turbine train which eventually became the electrically powered 155mph tilting Advanced Passenger Train (APT). Development took over 14 years and involved the introduction of 1,000 new parts with the train using as much if not more aeronautical technology than railway technology. However the train remained dogged by many problems - some of which were technical, some 'man made' (industrial action etc.,) and with the project running late, over budget and under very powerful political and managerial pressure to show results public services using prototype APT's began on 7th December 1981. Operating just one return trip daily with the outward journey running at the crack of dawn on a bitterly cold, frosty, snowy morning the initial public service was marred by a series of unlucky failures which attracted such hysterical negative press attention that even with further trials in the summer of 1982 (when the APT-P trains had been quietly reintroduced into service, and ran regularly with the problems having been apparently corrected) ultimately the whole project was abandoned. I seem to recall that all wheeled transports - both road and rail - were also suffering weather-related delays and problems on those few fateful wintry mornings. One specific complaint levied by those journalists who were carried on the fateful first train journey was that a side-effect of the tilting induced a feeling of 'queasiness', as in sea-sickness. Knowing the journalists' liking for alcoholic beverages some wags suggested that this was the cause of their feeling unwell, however in fact it turned out that perfectly compensating for lateral forces around curves could induce motion sickness, since the eyes could see turning but the body did not feel it - once this became apparent a solution was found by reducing the tilt by a few degrees so the curves could be felt. Perhaps if the passenger trials of the APT had been introduced into public service more quietly, and had not involved either services into London or any media invites, then there would have been a better chance of debugging the faults before they attracted such glaring media attention. And the trains would probably have been operating successfully today. Instead what should have been Britain's super train of the 1980's (and beyond) has now been reduced to being a museum curio. With Britain 'giving up' the Italians eventually won (in 1988) the race to introduce tilting trains into full service, with a train known as the Pendolino. Now the technology has come back to Britain with two fleets of new trains introduced between 2002 and 2004. The first is a tilting version of the diesel 125mph Virgin Voyager train; these are for the InterCity 'Cross Country' services which link many British cities on a network based around Birmingham whilst the others are variants of the Italian Pendolino tilting trains which are destined for the prestige London (Euston) - Birmingham - Manchester / Liverpool / Carlisle - Glasgow west coast main line. Nowadays tilting trains (of various designs, using different tilt technologies) also operate in Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, the USA plus other countries. Perhaps if we in Britain had of had more faith in the APT then successful operation on our domestic services would have lead to export sales for us too; Britain was the birthplace of railways, for many years our factories thrived on building trains for both home and export markets and it is perhaps unfortunate that the forward looking vision of the APT's creators for a fleet of tilting trains on the prestige West Coast Main Line is being realised 25+ years late by our buying technology developed overseas. |
Airport Rail Link Trains.
Airport Rail Link trains fall into two categories - those which provide dedicated services linking airports to cities and those which serve a wider hinterland with the airport being just one (albeit important) station as part of the entire route network.
Trains on the dedicated services will generally shuttle between the city centre and airport stations at high (or even very high) speeds, calling at very few (if any) intermediate stations. Internally they tend to be designed differently to other trains, featuring enhanced luggage facilities to cater for the high number of passengers travelling with heavy luggage.
As a contrast, trains which serve a wider hinterland with the airport being just one (albeit important) station as part of the entire route network will have to offer a compromise between the needs of the air travellers and those of the regular (local area) travellers. Typically that will mean nothing more than their having a little extra luggage space. This section does not look at these trains.
The Battle To Save The Gatwick ExpressAt one time air travellers using London's Gatwick Airport were served by extra carriages branded "Rapid City Link Gatwick - London" which travelled between London Victoria
and Gatwick Airport as part of regular trains but then remained in the platform at Gatwick Airport railway station whilst the rest of the train continued its journey towards the south coast.
In 1984 these were replaced by a dedicated non-stop service which charged premium fares, although many other local trains (charging ordinary fares) continued to call at the airport too.
Known as the Gatwick Express the introduction of this special service incensed many regular non-airport passengers because it was seen as a priority service which they claimed
negatively impacted on all other services using the line.
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Many of the dedicated airport - city centre services charge premium priced fares, apparently this being to make them (financially)
unattractive to regular commuters as otherwise the trains would be swamped, leaving no space for the air travellers. This partly explains why on a distance-travelled basis
Londons' prestige Heathrow Express is even more expensive than flying first class - though as a spokesperson from the "International Air Rail Organisation" (IARO)
(which promotes airport rail links) pointed out to me even with several people travelling together using these trains still works out considerably cheaper (plus significantly
faster) than going by taxi.
The IARO have a website at http://www.iaro.com (link to an external site which opens in a new window).
Internally the Heathrow Express trains are very well equipped, featuring comfortable seats, plenty of luggage space, provision for special needs accessibility and even aircraft-style seat-back emergency exit information and floor mounted emergency lighting. When first introduced these trains also featured racks of visitor-orientated leaflets and pay-telephones, however as with street-based public telephones the rise in the use of mobile phones (cell phones in American English) will have significantly reduced the need for public telephones.
The trains also feature television display units which even on a short 15-minute journey really do make the journey seem to fly. The 'programme' usually consists of a special Heathrow Express edition of the BBC TV news and weather, advertisements, short features and public-information style safety messages - such as messages advising passengers to 'mind the gap' between the train and platform when alighting
Having sampled this on-train TV service I strongly feel that for all but the shortest urban journey the television displays really are a good idea - though passengers who wish to doze, read books, work on the laptop etc., might wish for some 'quiet' zones too.
A major issue which faces airports is that people who live close to them dislike the noise & air pollution caused by the aircraft and passengers / airport workers travelling to and from the airport. For new airports a possible solution is to locate the airport a distance away from the city - but then the journey times to reach the city centre becomes so extended that it will deter potential passengers.
The solution of course is to build a very high speed rail link so that even though the distance travelled may be quite large the journey time will be very short. Since 29th December 2003 a high-speed maglev line has been carrying passengers between the new Pudong International Airport and Shanghai, China, taking less than eight minutes to travel over 30km. Bearing in mind that this journey time includes acceleration and braking this is very fast! The "Transrapid" system uses German technology and is capable of cruising at 300mph+, although on such a short line that speed is not reached. For more information visit http://www.transrapid.de or http://www.transrapid-usa.com.(links to external websites which open in new windows).
In February 2005 a consortia put forward proposals for a British Maglev network linking 75% of the British population along the London - Birmingham - Liverpool - Manchester - West Yorkshire (Leeds) - Teeside - Tyneside (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne) - Edinburgh - Glasgow corridor. More information can be found at their website http://www.500kmh.com (link to an external site which opens in a new window).
