Atomic Systems

Because facing someone else you don't know is less comfortable than sitting next to someone you don't know.

I agree. It can get quite uncomfortable facing someone you don't know.

Just an update from some central european operators (I've been travelling).

For intercity, OeBB (Austria), MAV (Hungary) HZ (Croatia, and SZ (Slovenia) all have compartments in their newest coaching stock. Noticeably fewer seats and it's not actually that nice if you're forced to share a compartment (let's say, with young children, or drunks) - I used to be for compartments, but I think I'm now against them. However, every foreign operator I've used has had more leg room than UK ones. However, they also generally run loco-hauled stock, so it's easy to deal with capacity issues by adding extra carriages, and not needing to cram passengers in to meet rush hour demands.

AN