NEW Metropolitan lines trains ('Nice new Metropolitan line trains if you can catch one', Observer, December 16), are certainly clean and sleek.
However, having travelled in one last week, as you mentioned in your article, the many fewer seats (29 per cent fewer) are the first noticeable difference. Plenty of people were having to stand whereas normally they would not.
In addition, the train has no internal doors, so no longer can we choose the carriage without the louts or without the crying babies or even ensure that we take our own screaming children to a carriage with no one else in.
No more can we enjoy the privacy of the high-backed seats. No longer are there spaces for briefcases and bags on racks above the seats.
Instead, people can walk up and down from front to back of the train. Privacy is destroyed and noise level elevated.
Let us hope it takes many years to remove the old trains. With the demise of our beloved old favourites, a bit of Metroland will disappear forever and Betjeman might turn in his grave.
Meanwhile, if you do travel on the new trains, do ensure you keep the noise down, do not continuously walk up and down the carriages and be even more considerate to others than before - as there is now no escape.
SUSAN SINGLETON (address supplied)
