Modern traction, stuff like Sprinters, Pacers, Voyagers. In future will people want to preserve them

Noisy, no leg room would be my take Ralph.

 

I agree with Gladiator 5076 about Voyagers, poor leg room, poor shoulder room, not much better than 3+2 seating on a 450 and noisy. Very few hand holds when Full and Standing, but perhaps that was part of XC policy to discourage short journeys like Reading Basingstoke or New Street to Coventry. At least they have more or less cured the chemical toilet smell. Before anyone thinks I'm just having a go at Voyagers, I commuted on them for four years. Some days, the thought of a crowded 221 from Reading (probably with defective air-con) was enough to catch the following Turbo to Basingstoke and a SWT service home.

A 158 or 159 may be noisier, but particularly the GW refurbished examples have better seats and leg room.

Cheers, Neil

 

I will speak in partial defence of the Voyager. The basic bodyshell design is sound, as @RalphW says, the windows are large, and travel in the right carriage is both comfortable and on a par with the Mk4. The issue with them is the combination of too few carriages, and those given too little saloon space, together with a cramped seating plan to try to cram in a viable number of seats.

I would far rather travel in a Voyager than a Pendolino, which I find has equally cramped seating, but with added claustrophobia due to very small windows.

As an ECML user, I've become acquainted with the class 80x Hitachi units; these have learned some of the lessons from the Voyagers and Pendolinos, but suffer from even worse seats and incredibly fidgetty ride.

 

Yes, I would say on the NE/SW the problems are a combination of all you say especially crowding plus inevitable issues with reliability on 500 mile trips plus sky high fares if you are not savvy with split ticketing. Plenty of people on the Leeds-Sheffield run preferred the 158 with a fifteen minute longer journey time. Not so sure about the 195s though! Are any of the new generation of trains actually better in ambience than what they replaced, Pacers aside?

 

Utter crap is how I’d describe a 220/221.
However having a couple of trips on a Greater Anglia nice new units (745’s?) from Cambridge to Norwich and return (a journey of over an hour or so) they are pretty decent, nice comfy seats. Aircon that works, decent leg room, whisper it quietly but these are rather nice, so can we keep hold of them for a while?