The past week has been a blur and I haven’t had time to post here, so here’s a quick one:
On Wednesday I was on ABC Radio Melbourne, talking about train seat covers.
Why train seat covers? It was inspired by a Reddit post that noticed the Siemens train seats have lots of station names on them, but for some reason, Brunswick is more prominent than others.
Are train seat cover patterns a strategic topic for public transport advocacy? Not really.
But the radio spot was arranged in advance, allowing some thinking time, so a couple of good strategic campaign messages were able to be seamlessly included, without bogging down what was basically a light-hearted discussion. So everybody wins!
Apart from Brunswick being so prominent when it has some of the least frequent trains in Melbourne, perhaps the bigger mystery is why Rockbank is on there – it’s a V/Line station, not served by Metro. (But given #MelbsWest is growing so fast, it should be!) pic.twitter.com/WziahfoUYi
â Daniel Bowen (@danielbowen) August 9, 2022
Here’s the audio if you want to listen. The segment starts at 1:19:40, but some of the rest of the show has listeners ringing in with stories about trains.
8 replies on “Train seat covers”
Somerville’s on there too despite being a diesel service. Probably the bigger question is, why do X’Trapolis trains still have Connex seat covers in 2022? Especially when the identical Comeng seats have the newer PTV design while the trains are ending up in the scrapyard.
Good point about Somerville, though at least that’s technically a Metro station!
I suspect the answer on the X’Traps is there are plenty of spare seat covers in stock. It doesn’t make sense to scrap them, given the “Connex” name isn’t that obvious.
It’s a pity ABC Radio stopped producing transcripts of their programs a few years ago –
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/aug/05/abc-source-dries-up-as-transcripts-of-news-and-current-affairs-shows-curtailed
It makes access to information a lot less accessible for someone who can’t listen in, and prevents someone stumbling upon a program via a search engine.
@Marcus, and eventually the audio goes offline.
That said, I don’t think ABC ever did transcripts for things like their Breakfast show.
A couple of years ago, I was an extra in The Whistleblower (which was shot here in Melbourne) and while filming a scene on a Comeng train (at the Newport Train Yards), the train I was on for the scene had similar fabric, but there was a red variant and a greyish variant.
@indigohex3 – it was probably the trial life extension set, they tested a few different seat colours back in 2017:
https://www.danielbowen.com/2017/03/09/comeng-fleet-upgrade/
Could someone please help me. I cannot find St Albans in the list of station names on the seat covers despite looking quite intently at it for some time. Perhaps it is staring me right in the face but it is not obvious. Where is it?
Thanks
Simon
@Simon – I can’t see it either, even on this larger photo of the same seat.
https://railgallery.wongm.com/melbourne-emu-interiors/E122_8570.jpg.html
By the looks of it, there are only ~50 names listed, not the 200+ stations in Melbourne, so St Albans isn’t on there.