New trains for the Fenchurch Street-Southend line coming into service later this year are being built with “walk through” corridors between carriages—so passengers can wander off to look for seats if it’s full.
The 24 carriages being assembled at the Derby rail works for National Express C2C operators will run as four-car trains with wider seats that have arm rests, plug sockets for laptops and personal reading lights.
The trains have 225 seats each, providing 13,500 extra places a week at peak times when they are joined up to form eight-carriage trains. Each four-carriage train also has two toilets and two wheelchair areas—twice as many as present.
They start running from Fenchurch Street by the end of the year, serving 26 stations from the City and east London out to South Essex, including Fenchurch Street, Limehouse and West Ham.
The C2C line has held the rail industry’s “best punctuality” record for a train operator anywhere in Britain over the past six years at 97.5 per cent annually and 98.8pc on average on any four-week period.
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