no complaints from me about the seats. The correct upright design to promote good posture. It's a myth that a soft enveloping seat is more comfortable. I remember well the back ache I had on my last trip to Norwich sat in an IC70.
I can't remember what the IC70s in Anglia's mark 3s are like, but I seem to recall that my first impression of IC70 seats (which was on a Chiltern silver set before they had the power doors) was that they were NOT all that soft. Much more recently, I noted that the seat back on the IC70s in an East Midlands Trains IC125 was quite hard. The softest seat I've had recently was Northern's 158794 on a trip from Sheffield to Nottingham in August.
ronically enough - in this week of new IETs▸ being launched - the only high speed service to be found when I went through Paddington (to get through to Reading) this afternoon featured a power car sporting what I think was the original HST▸ livery.
43002 currently carries a
BR▸ blue & grey colour scheme which is close to the original Intercity 125 livery (I think the shade of blue used on 43002 looked a little too green when I saw it for myself and I've read somewhere that the first two power cars had black fill on the lettering for a while so not quite the original livery but very nearly).
Yet to travel on one of these trains and only realized recently that the longer version (are they 9 or 10 cars? Both figures are given... ) is actually two put together. That is a little odd and seems awkward.
There will be some 9-car
IEP▸ trains in the
GWR▸ fleet in future (one train, not two together) but they aren't ready for service yet. The new trains currently entering service with GWR are the short version (5-car) which are currently being used in pairs, so you are right about two being put together to make a 10 carriage train. I agree with you that this is awkward for passengers as they will not be able to walk between carraiges 5 and 6. Also, there will be two seperate first class areas with kitchens in a 10 carriage train, which means the total number of seats is only about 3 more than the whole 9 carriage trains will have when they arrive.
At speed in a quiet carriage you become noticeably aware of the wind noise, its not clear if is poor air flow design in the air conditioning or poor aerodynamics of roof mounted components.
I've not been on a class 800 yet (do the current diagrams apply at weekends too?) so not sure what you mean, but the suggestion by Adelante_CCT that the pantograph could create wind noise when it is up makes sense. The new units do also have poor aerodynamics around the doors (due to Hitachi not using European plug door technology on this fleet), could the wind noise be due to that?
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