The 800 series stock have 88 seats in the trailer cars. Realistically, they could have 80. They have 9 bays ie 72 seats, and another 8 could be fitted in. I don't know what the bay dimension is, but optimal is 1.90 meters. I suspect the bays are 2.0 metres.
British railways are optimised for vehicles 20 metres long, with space for 64 seats and a couple of toilets. This was established in 1951. That allows them to be full width, nominally 2.82 metres, which is the old C1 loading gauge. These are the dimension of British Railways mark 1 stock, as well as the recent types running mostly south of London. Vehicles with these dimensions can run anywhere on the system.
Longer 23 metre vehicle (Mark 3) were introduced in 1971 to a new loading gauge, C3. These are 2.74 metres wide ie 8 cm narrower than the Mark 1 stock; the reduced width is to provide the additional clearance on curves where the vehicles overhang more. They also have a restricted range of operation as routes have to be specially approved to ensure that they can run safely, and works have had to be carried out such as cutting back of platform edges. A 23 metre vehicle allows for 72 seats, perhaps 76, at a bit of a squeeze.
The 800 series are, as you say, a nominal 26 metres. These are the same width as the mark 3 stock but are tapered from the doorways to the ends; this means that about 6 metre length of each vehicle is not full wide and cannot be used for seating. Further additional works are having to be carried out to accommodate these; I understand that there are still issues at certain stations with sharply curved platforms. The tapered end areas can be used for luggage but it is not safe storage as they are out of sight from the passengers.
There is a further loss in width due to the use of pocketed sliding doors, instead of plug doors. Due to the tapered ends, these doors cannot slide towards the vehicle ends but slide inwards and intrude into the seating areas, which means that there are 8 windowless seats at the ends of each car. From which it can be concluded that 26 metre vehicles are too long for the British system and the choice was a bad decision.
If you look at the train as a whole, the use of the space is inefficient. They are five-car units which are in most cases coupled together. This results in large driving cab areas uselessly located in the centre of the trains. These waste not only space but also the considerable investment in providing them with all the costly equipment which now has to be fitted into a driving cab, and these cabs are not just the cubicle style of driving cab customary on conventional multiple unit trains such as the Great Western’s own Class 387 Electrostars, but large cabs with a sloping apron in front. Because they are not provided with through gangway connections, the two halves of the train have to be fully staffed, and there is more wasted space as two sets of catering facilities have to be provided. These are inefficient trains to operate.
Finally, for reasons which are not immediately obvious but are probably due to the length of the vehicles and the large relative movement between them on curves, there is an exceptionally wide gap between each pair of vehicles, which is more wasted space. In the case of mark 1 stock, this was just 30 cm, resulting in a very short ‘tunnel’ to pass through from coach to coach.
All in all, then, these are a poor concept. No criticism of Hitachi in intended here, because they have achieved a high standard of finish inside and out, with a real feeling of quality. The blame lies with the Department for Transport who specified the trains. These trains are, incidentally, probably the most expensive trains in the world for normal speed running.
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