The New Quick-Seat Chair Vintage Rail Journey Series All Aboard! The Flying Scotsman

By Khadi Madama

Wellness Coordinator for Quick-Seat Chair

Being a lover of all things ‘railroad’ with fondest memories of riding the rails in overnight sleeper cars to Florida as a child, it’s impossible for me to watch a movie that takes place on a train and not notice how much more comfortable the crew and wait staffs would be if only they had Quick-Seat Chairs on board. In fact, a recent trip from the Jersey shore to the wilds of Detroit taught me that. In the sleeper trains, the rail crew are on their feet for what seems like night to dawn, and from stem to stern in an effort to insure that all guests have everything they need. In fact, it was the first time that anyone turned down my bed for me since a cruise of the last voyage of the famous SS. Rotterdam.

But what of their feet, their lower backs, their hips, their shoulders and arms? In the world of  Tai Chi, for instance, with its focus on harmony and balance there is something called “The 6 Harmonies.” Hips are to be aligned to the shoulders, knees to elbows and ankles to wrists. It’s very easy to see that if a person starts to feel fatigue in the lower extremities, it will affect the upper and vice-versa. Hence, when it’s time to sit, it’s time to sit, and Quick-Seat Chairs are a very excellent solution designed for tight places for when those occasions of the “need to sit” crop up.

That takes us right on to our first rail journey on-board The Flying Scotsman of 1838, a Royal Mail Train. This is the exact opposite of The Orient Express for there is no luxury, no sitting, not even while eating. Regardless of how pretty this vintage “royal” mail train looks, the faces of the workers betray a very grueling and time-intensive job.

Watching film footage from the 1930’s of the mail crew who worked all night on the mail train, sleeping in small workers quarters during the day, made me want to open a Quick-Seat Chair to get off my feet even while I was relaxing on the sofa while watching the documentary, a British production doing reenactments of the exact manner in which the mail was sorted on those long over-night hauls. I literally wanted to jump into the documentary with  2 dozen Quick-Seat Chairs. The process of dropping off the mail was repeated 34 times each night along the route. It’s difficult to imagine.

In one scene of old film clips, it showed the men using a tiny wall mounted oven to heat their ‘tea break pies’ and to heat water for tea, which they would eat and drink while standing. This would never do today. There are laws against this kind of thing. Of course I thought the wall-mounted tiny toaster oven and hot water apparatus was nice-but that’s because they’re wall-mounted like a Quick-Seat Chair.

I like to think of Quick-Seat Chairs as helping people to feel a connection to hospitality, comfort and safety in areas such as large industrial, commercial, medical and educational complexes, which can be  devoid of warmth, and that although one sees benches or chairs scattered around, they are often placed there as part of a design scheme rather than as part of a fall risk or safety and hospitality function. The  Quick-Seat  Chair was designed with ready availability, a clean surface with stability and  comfort for when that unexpected ache, or fatigue sets in, which it can when people are outside their normal daily range of mobility. Quick-Seat Chair was designed with real people with real needs and with a serviceable intention to fulfill those needs. From the heart of Quick-Seat Chairs to our guests.   

Quick-Seat Chair. Temporary Seating That Closes Itself.