Doors on HSTs - why not automatic?

Thu 27 Nov 2008, 23:27

The doors weren't automated because of cost and engineering issues.

Automatic doors on trains are of two types, sliding within the train's body, or plug (like those on Adelantes, they pop out and then slide along the outside). To retro-fit either of these on the HST coaches would have involved rebuilding the end of each coach. You wouldn't be allowed for safety reasons to have power-opening of the existing slam doors, in case you knocked someone over.

I'm afraid, rather like the Cotswold Line itself, that the slam doors are a case of 1970s British Rail cost-cutting to keep within a tight budget. There was a design drawn up for plug doors, but it was only ever fitted on a batch of electric trains, using the same type of coaches, built for Waterloo-Bournemouth expresses in the 1980s and on coaches supplied to Irish Railways about the same time.

Wed 26 Nov 2008, 21:50

Mark (a guard on FGW) makes a point on the Cotswold Line blog about asking passengers to close doors behind them on HSTs. Whilst I agree with Mark that this is a reasonable request (one can't really expect the guard to sprint the entire length of the platform at each station to slam all the doors on an eight-coach train!), why do HSTs still have slam doors in 2008? When the multi-million pound HST refit was carried out last year, why didn't they take the opportunity to fit automatic, electronically operated doors at the same time? Other rail companies (Cross Country, Chiltern, South West Trains) have automatic doors on all (or almost all) of their trains - why can't FGW? Electronic doors are easy to use and save both time and effort. Almost every time I use an HST I see someone (usually, but not always, a woman!) struggling to open the doors; there is a knack to opening them and some people just don't have it. If the doors opened and shut automatically then this problem would go away, the trains would have more chance of running on time and Alex F wouldn't have to expend any more effort closing doors behind him!