As for the "bike spaces" - diabolically limited hanger compartments which you have to juggle to get even a normal-shape bike into, and a convoluted dividing bar system which I can imagine making a nasty dent in a carbon frame.
Train staff I have spoken to have real sympathy for cyclists using these trains. No idea how this design passed any meaningful consultation.
This thread refers:
https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=79449.0The design was presented to us mostly as a fait accompli. They'd come up with a clever modular system whereby toilets, bike spaces, catering provision and whatever were easily added or removed from the trains according to the customer specification. (I hypothesise this may have something to do with
their objection to installing appropriate signage.)
Clever, that is, apart from the idea that hanging cycles is acceptable, which the volume afforded by the modular system requires.
I'm more disgruntled than usual, after spending Friday evening in the company of a middle aged lady with a Dutch-style city bike, and her son with a typical modern wide-barred mountain bike, trying to fit our cycles in the dangly bike spaces of a CrossCountry Class 220
[1]. I was the only one tall enough to accomplish this safely, and neither the Dutch bike nor my recumbent
[2] actually fitted properly (the mountain bike did, to the exclusion of anything in the adjacent space, because handlebars). Any cycling provision that doesn't work for a typical middle aged woman with a typical middle-aged woman's bike fails at the first hurdle, IMHO.
[1] Actually two, because once we'd succeeded in cramming everything in, they kicked everyone off that train and withdrew it from service.
[2] I'd tested this and knew that I could fit the bike in if I brought some extra straps to secure it diagonally.