Some of us will have had to look up what that was, here it is:

https://www.danburykline.co.uk/DK/soros.html

Mark

Good grief. Did you take a photo of that picturesque hole in the bodywork by... was it the cab window?

Mark

Thanks, Chris, for identifying the chain of responsibility for this, Industryinsider, Taplowgreen
johnneyw for emphasising that the issue does not affect 100% of the seating.

Now, if this was a workplace, I'd be off to my health and safety rep. about the risk to health from this seat defect. Witness the fact that the seats used by staff are the best on the train.

It seems I now need a "Health and Safety Executive" but for passengers on public transport.

Mark

None at the station. About 85 in the arches below the viaduct approach in what would have been the station throat, that certain travellers might pass on the way to the station (they're not signed from the station itself and the step-free route to them is circuitous, particularly at this time of year as the high-footfall-circular-flow-enabling gate at that end of the station is locked out of use). They're not open all year round though.

I think it's the town council that provides the towns loos and have fairly recently made the decision to charge (40p, turnstile) for the very prominent ones at the harbour front by the lifeboat station. (The notice announcing this explained that loo-provision takes up an enormous proportion of the town council's budget)

There are a few others too, e.g at the pierhead.

Looking at Streetview, the ones up at Trenwith long-stay car park have transmogrified into a (closed at the usual times) cafe.

Mark

Thanks for your thoughts, and yes, the risk of a DVT^‡(resolve) is small and also an event might occur long enough after the individual has travelled that cause and effect would not be picked up - court cases brought by passengers on this are problematic (for the passenger).

Concerning DVTs, the stats: "The risk for healthy people is approximately 1 in 107,000 for flights lasting less than four hours and 1 in 4,600 for flights lasting more than four hours. That figure increases to 1 in 1,200 for flights lasting more than 16 hours."  (Source: NHS patient leaflet)

Add risk factors to the calculation and those figures ramp up, sometimes very substantially, and one of the risk factors is damaged seating.

Two significant vulnerabilities that interfere with circulation are pressure behind the bent knee, and poorly distributed pressure beneath a thigh - the first being responsible for the increased risk for people below a certain height, while for those above a certain height, the lack of room to adjust ones position comes into play and leads to an increased risk for those people too.

The Class 800 seating as designed might avoid exposing people to the second vulnerability but not once the cushioning has collapsed to the extent that the customer's weight is carried by whatever that transverse structure is beneath it.

Agreed that GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)'s customer service will be used to categorising passenger feedback on the IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) seating as a discomfort-related issue rather than a safety related issue, which masks from the organisation that some of that seating has deteriorated and is damaged to the extent that it's a safety risk for their customers.

To climb out of that silo it might be good if someone from GWR cross-checked with someone from the world of medicine. Medical equipment with that defect might well be taken out of use immediately. Yes, people in hospital may well be at a higher risk of DVT than the general population, but whether in hospital or not, we are the same people.

I don't think that GWR should immediately replace all IEP seats on this account: what they might do is audit for the ones that have deteriorated sufficiently to expose whatever structure is causing this issue and, as a priority, replace those.

Mark

St Erth Station: identity crisis, right there.

(OK, it has a couple of other crises as well, including a 'Suspended-on-hinges station name signs in need of oil' crisis.)
 
It's now a park-and-ride site, with a railway station attached, and the two haven't quite been brought under the same roof. Away from railway stations, and ignoring that one near Oxford that was built and then had no bus services for years, it's not unheard of for park-and-ride sites to provide loos, accessible loos, babychanging facilities, but this being a railway station, the parking is managed by APCOA^▸ (Car parking company used at GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) - controlled stations in the area) who don't involve themselves in toilet provision.

While rail travellers might find the station loos closed, they have the option of on-train loos on the main line. In contast, for people using the site for park and ride, transferring from the train, provision of toilets in cars is notoriously poor - and if they're on the train back from St Ives, the number of loos on the train won't match the number of people needing them - and if they arrive at the site on the bus, buses do not have loos in the first place.

It would be good to hear an account of the visitor experience for people using St Erth as a park and ride for St Ives versus the historic experience at Lelant Saltings. The latter's weaknesses were 200 spaces vs 500 and a platform that was very exposed to the weather - but it did offer relatively straightforward transfer from car to train, and didn't charge for parking. Wikipedia has the history of the park and ride there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lelant_Saltings_railway_station

Mark

'The Scotsman' newspaper.

https://www.scotsman.com/news/people/scotsman-obituaries-allan-mclean-scottish-journalist-who-became-a-respected-voice-in-defence-of-britains-rail-network-4966712

Hi Chris. 'Uncomfortable' in relation to seating becomes a passenger safety issue when 'Discomfort' crosses a threshold and the sitter experiences pain, which is the body's way of signalling that it's being damaged, reversibly or irreversibly.

An issue with discomfort progressing to 'Pain when sitting', is that the vulnerable systems involve nerves and also blood circulation, so this gets into 'Deep vein thrombosis' territory among other things. Certain individuals are more vulnerable than others and this is not necessarily related to age.

The IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) seats, once the filling has suffered inelastic deformation, become uncomfortable, but when this has progressed enough to result in the passenger being supported by other structures within the seat that are ill-designed for that purpose, that's become a safety issue.

An aspect of this is that the effect can be cumulative (on the passenger). That's not necessarily good news for someone who uses these trains on a daily basis.

Having received a quick response from GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) on this, the current perception from them is that this is a 'Comfort' issue rather than involving passenger safety, and I'll respond.

Mark

More seriously, suspecting that seat comfort is classed as 'Convenience', it would be good if GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) were moved to address this particular defect as the passenger safety issue it surely is.

If anyone has ideas on how to raise this defect's status from 'Inconvenience' to 'Passenger safety issue', I'm all ears.

Mark

:-)

Mark

An aside on ticketing. Graham was travelling on very good value advance single tickets from Melksham through to Penzance and back.

As to my spur of the moment decision, an on the day anytime return Bath Spa to Penzance is £79.25. Many people used to peak time travel to London would expect that to be far more expensive as it will be more than twice the distance.

With my destination undecided, from the ticket office I bought an anytime return to Taunton, and then the train manager was happy to sell me an anytime day return from Taunton to Exeter, ~£11. Then, the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) app sold me an Exeter-Plymouth day return for another ~£11 and as the Penzance train terminated at Plymouth, the booking office there sold me a Cornwall day ranger which allows travel from Plymouth to all destinations in Cornwall and for good measure, the Gunnislake branch. In my case it covered the leg to Penzance and then back to St Erth and to St Ives. So, £54ish in all for the day's rail travel.

Does anyone on the forum collect railway tickets by the way?

Mark

Is the Instructor/assessor's seat bookable by passengers please?

Mark

Given the lead distance, by the time the driver's within sight of that '25' sign, not sure what he's meant to do about it. Perhaps there's something else set further back.

Mark

Fainsa (the seat makers). Their company history to be found on the link below. I can't copy and paste the 2016-17 chapter but it tells a tale.

As Fainsa have made seating since 1903, I'm surprised that they're not mortified at that failure mode for a product that's widely deployed.

https://www.compinfainsa.com/corporate/history

Thanks for bringing up the question of temperature - a couple of hours into the run and with a fresh train manager joining us, an announcement went out apologising for that, it being chilly, it was not responding to attempts to adjust it, and carriage 'K' being particularly chilly, people in it might like to move to 'L'.

Mark

A seat defect that's actually visible, and one that doesn't make for a good seated experience. The seat upholstery has compressed and whatever structure it is - some sort of metal bar - that runs across the seat ahead of that red arrow ... these are beyond use (as a seat) and this urgently needs addressing. People shouldn't be expected to have to bring their own seat cushions. I'll raise this with GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway).

Mark