Northwood, London

A film about the London Underground S Stock trains which entered passenger service on Saturday 31st July 2010 - although these sequences were filmed on the Monday following. The trains represent a step change in comfort and passenger amenity, but because of the reduction in seating compared to older trains their use on the outer suburban sections of the Metropolitan Line has not been universally welcomed. Two most noticeable new features for London are that the trains are fully air-conditioned and designed so that people can walk through them from one end to the other end. Being new they also meet the highest standards of accessibility, and have built in CCTV camera systems. Very welcome is that the doors will automatically close after 45 seconds, keeping winter heat and summer cooling in the train. Passenger push-buttons are provided to re-open the doors The ambiance is bright, there are large picture windows, and the quality of ride is simply superb. Regarding the seating reduction, the older A stock trains seated about 450 passengers, whilst these seat little more than 300. The intended idea is maintain capacity by running them more frequently, but this requires signalling and track upgrades which are years away, and it should be noted that when Virgin tried this on the CrossCountry railway franchise it all came to tears - because the physical infrastructure (tracks, signalling) could not cope with the extra trains. The resulting cut-backs left some services worse off <b>...</b>