c604. wrote:When I used to take Metra downtown regularly around 2003-2005, there were quite a few of those cars with the green seats with the metal bar on top. I used to hate them; for a taller person they were shorter seatbacks to begin with, then to rest your head on the seatback? Nothing like just relaxing and tilting your head back with your eyes closed to only have your neck hit COLD steel to jolt you back up.
The Budd cars with the high seatbacks in Byte’s second picture were my favorite. The seatbacks were even taller than the older Pullman seats that were similar. The higher seats deadened noise (such as voices on phones), and were just all around very comfortable.
One seat type that that I remember is one that I saw only once and never again. It was 1996 and Budd cars were just starting to migrate over to the UP lines, this was on an 8200 cab car (that was leading, very different for the time) on the UP-NW line. I swear that it had something like brown and black seats that were fixed in position, no flipping or moving. Half the car was facing one way; the other half was facing the other way. Does anyone else remember something like this?
I believe the fixed seats (brown seats with a black bar on top) were the original seats for the Budd Cars that were built for the RTA in the late 1970s and early 1980s (7284-7381, 8239-8275). While they mostly ran on SWS/HC/RI/Milwaukee District, a few did wander over to the UP. Living along the Milwaukee District, I rode on those cars several times.
Beginning in the 1990s, the fixed ones were replaced with the red/orange flip back seats. They were all replaced by either 2001 and 2002. I don't miss them! They were my least favorite seats.