Ok so I have noticed that railfans are really divided about Flirts. Some love them, some hate them. They are nice trains and the only reasons why someone would hate them I can think of are because of seats and https://nox.tips/ https://xender.vip/ because they are replacing our much loved older trains. Whats your opinion?
Depending on the operator and model they might not be the most comfortable put there, but compared to modern EMU's it's hard to be the worst. The FLIRT is average in comfort. It does look very pretty however, easily among the prettiest modern EMU's in my opinion. Where the FLIRT truly shines in my eyes is the fact that it's a stable, proven and reliable platform. That's something one can't say about a lot of modern rolling stock. I remember that the FLIRT 3 pretty quickly became the preferred choice to remedy a urgent material shortage in the Netherlands. Their introduction went pretty much without any problems, and I don't know of any reliability issues. The FLIRT was also among thw pioneers of low floor entry, and still does this very well. I get that many view modern EMU's as characterless, and dislike them because of that. They'll never fascinate me as much as the locos of old days either. However, I think that the FLIRT is a train perfectly suited to the modern railway environment. Only passenger comfort could be improved here and there, but such things aren't an inherent flaw of the FLIRT, as they are heavily (if not totally) dependant on customer wishes and demands.
I've spent the last month regularly commuting on the Class 745/0 FLIRTs on the Great Eastern Main Line, aside from trouble with the PIS one time there hasn't been anything go wrong whilst I've been travelling on them. From a commuter perspective I really like them, certainly among the more comfortable modern trains I've ridden on from the last 5 years or so. Certainly much nicer than the Class 720 Aventras also running on the GEML. As much as miss the old 90s and Mk3 sets the FLIRTs are a massive step up for the commuter and I suspect they'll be the pioneers of a new generation of accessible trains in the UK.
