Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: M1

This is the I.P. Pavlova Metro station, one of the oldest on the system, built around 1970, if I'm not mistaken. Construction of the Metro lasted from about 1967-1974, with service starting between what is now Florenc (then called Sokolovska) and Kacerov in 1974.

Here's a shot right down the middle of the aisle. The M1's come in two seating configurations that I know of, one without any seats facing inward, and one with them, like this one. To the best of my knowledge, nearly everyone prefers this configuration, as the former obstructs seating, standing, and movement through the coach. Generally speaking, I can't think of what moron would think that using seats not facing inward on a Metro train would be a good idea, as I've nearly had my knees taken out, or been shoved into the seats by rude people, on multiple occassions. For that matter, I think that ALL of the seats should face in, as on the old Russian Metro trains that were still in use when I moved to Prague. This is the system used on the New York City subway, the Tokyo subway, the Budapest Metro, and most of the London Underground (with the exception of the Metropolitan and East London Lines), so it's a no-brainer that it's quite standard throughout the world for a reason.

The light traffic at the hour I did my shoot allowed me to get some decent interior shots of the M1.

DPP started to take delivery of their Seimens M1 Metro trains in 1998, but it took until 2003 for them to fully replace the Communist-era trains on the C-Line, or red line. By the time I arrived a few years later, they were already badly vandalised, but since that time they've been cleaned up. Really, Prague needs more of them, on the C-Line and elsewhere, but DPP are stalling on buying new rolling stock. The trains have become quite overloaded in the past two years, and still the problem continues. On this night, however, the trains were pretty empty because it was too early for the clubbers to be coming home, yet too late for most of them to be heading out, even though it was Saturday.