Nasadowsk wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 9:33 pm
Arlington wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 8:50 pm
Riding backwards is diffrent and new, which is all it takes in this forum to be denounced as a plot against customers, despite global (and commuter) acceptance.
I predict it will be a non issue with customers (as it has for Brightline) and a clear win for mechanical and operational simplicity.
I agree. It's a non issue elsewhere in the world, and most European trains out accelerate US ones by a good amount, which is where it'd be most annoying. A lot of commuter equipment has fixed seats now, even in the US.
Also doesn't seem to be an issue in sleeper, where 50% of the seats face backwards and are certainly not rotating. Where are the guys complaining about the sleeper seats facing backwards? Haven't heard much on that.
Related, it seems that very early sleeper cars in Great Britain had beds oriented longitudinally, like Amtrak roomettes. Around 1890 or 1900, an engineer figured out they could fit more passengers by going to transverse berths like Amtrak bedrooms. It caused quite the uproar, and a prolific poet at the time wrote that he would "pull in my feet as I pass Aviemore", implying he was afraid they'd strike the platform because it was such an unconventional riding position.
Evidently it's not been an issue as all British sleeper berths are transverse, and none of them even convert to daytime chairs.
Closing the loop with Acela 2, I'm sure there will be grumbling. I sincerely hope the improve the chairs rather than decontent them, like Hitachi did with the IET/800-class that replaced the HST125.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.