STEPHEN Joseph (chief executive officer of Campaign for Better Transport) has forcefully exposed the need for adequate passenger consultation on seat design for the new Hitachi Class 800 Azuma trains intended for the Aberdeen/Inverness-Dundee-Edinburgh/Glasgow East Coast route to London next year ("Comfort upgrade for travellers as 7,000 carriages introduced", The Herald, January 29).

Despite their sleek, shiny exteriors and trendy brand-name, the benefit of a 20-minute faster Edinburgh-London journey (to just four hours) is likely to be squandered by the disappointing prospect of "bone-hard" uncomfortable seating provided. Passenger experience on the similar Azuma trains now operating the London-Bristol-Cardiff-Swansea route has been described as a seating experience equivalent to sitting on hard wooden planking covered by the thinnest possible fabric.

Seasoned rail commentators have observed open public hostility and increasing passenger disquiet over the absurd rigidity and sheer discomfort imposed by skimped and unpleasantly hard seating, which on at least one occasion witnessed the grim spectacle of passengers volunteering to get off the Azuma and await the next train operated by an older, but more comfortable High Speed Intercity 125 train. These higher quality 1970s trains are still accepted as the finest trains ever to run in Britain (and now being overhauled and refurbished as high quality trains for key Scottish intercity routes).

In ranking of travel priorities, especially on longer routes, rail passengers expect decent quality of seating comfort as an absolute prerequisite, particularly after the steeply increasing cost of fares and undermining Hitachi's reassuring claim that these trains will "usher in a new era of comfort and style".

An "informed insider" from a respected railway magazine has prudently warned that the rail industry "must not get into a mindset that people will travel on whatever rolling stock is provided [and] interior train designers need to think about sustaining a positive value for money judgment for each journey". It's a very perceptive comment on a key weakness of those Azuma trains, with a passenger backlash now exposing poor seating as the weakest link in what may otherwise be a technically well engineered product.

Perhaps a wake-up call to Hitachi management could be forthcoming, in response to passenger dissatisfaction, with a high-level rumour reportedly suggesting those Azuma trains currently running in England/Wales are now going to get a refit including more comfortable seats. If true it's certainly good news, not just for those trains still to be fitted out for the long Anglo-Scottish East Coast route, but a salutary commercial reminder that a policy of high fares for hard seats (please bring cushion) creates an unwanted image for their own business.

Ken Sutherland,

12A Dirleton Gate, Bearsden.

THE low passenger usage at Edinburgh Gateway station is not surprising ("Train project off the rails, says critic as station is shunned by passengers", The Herald, February 1). Part and parcel of the original Edinburgh Glasgow Improvement Programme (Egip) project edging to its protracted conclusion, it was to be linked with the so-called Dalmeny chord with whatever was intended Glasgow Queen Street-Edinburgh electrified services calling thereat. Plans for this chord line were abandoned quite early on and the Gateway station should have followed suit. As built it is hardly a mile from South Gyle station (opened 1985) that surely would have sufficed as a gateway station for tram/airport connections as well as housing/business already in situ or planned.

John Macnab,

175 Grahamsdyke Street, Laurieston, Falkirk.