please empty your brain below
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I travelled back from Edinburgh in May this year and bought a single ticket to London at Princes Street station for travel as a turn up and go. It was not cheap!.
I had to stand all the way after York. getting removed from the seat I had sat in as it was reserved by someone joining the train at York.
From what I could tell most people had tickets that cost a quarter of what I had paid (and were return). A certain number of seats should be kept unreserved on trains for turn up and go passengers who pay the full fair.
John | 04.11.10 - 7:36 a.m. | #
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I think that on pre-booked journeys lasting over 1 hour, the price of a ticket should automatically include a seat booking. This way, train staff would know how full a train is and could put a sign on the platform stating 'non reserved seats past this point'.
Mark Garth | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 7:49 a.m. | #
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My experience is that four times out of five you won't be challenged when you take a 'reserved' seat. I've never had to move twice.
Gordon | 04.11.10 - 7:55 a.m. | #
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You and the rail companies - you'll never get on.
/coat
graybo | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 8:21 a.m. | #
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Reading this makes me think, this is another thing the UK could better sell off to foreigners so that it ran better.
Michael | 04.11.10 - 8:24 a.m. | #
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DG - I think you've got it wrong when you say they want you to turn up half an hour early and do bugger all - the idea is that you spend money at the extortionately priced shops while you're waiting :-(
Dave | 04.11.10 - 8:47 a.m. | #
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I usually have a reserved, timed ticket, because that's all my work will let me have. As you say, often it's by a bulkhead so there's no view, or next to someone loud (businessman or baby). I almost always move to another seat with a view, and hardly ever have to move again. In my experience, the only people who stop you from doing this are Eurostar, who seem to like cramming everyone down one end of a carriage, leaving acres of empty space.
Baldassaro | 04.11.10 - 9:28 a.m. | #
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The rail system splurges out all these unnecessary reservations, and then companies like East Coast have the audacity to charge you for a reservation because people don't use them!
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 9:36 a.m. | #
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I had a trip from London to Brighton last week. I purposely got an "anytime" ticket as I had no idea when my meeting would end. They got me though; the tickets duly arrived through the post, and I didn't notice "FCC". In case you don't get the obscure acronym, it means "First Capital Connect Trains Only". So not any train, any time. Beware the Bastards.
Tim | 04.11.10 - 10:10 a.m. | #
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It's not only businessman who have to pay the full whack. Tourists, who mostly do not know about our arcane system, also 'pay and go'. This creates a terrible impression, and puts them off recommending their friends from visiting UK.
fred barker | 04.11.10 - 10:22 a.m. | #
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Had a specific timed/train ticket from Brighton at the weekend (from thetrainline.com) and cost me half of what it would through the southern website.
Cut my weekend short though because i was properly ill - and after a short, polite conversation with the staff at Brighton station they let me back through on an earlier train. So... if your prepared to feign illness, but a specific timed ticket, and then travel anytime you like.. (on the return journey!)
geofftech | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 10:25 a.m. | #
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Michael - who do you think operates them now?
Four operators (Wales, Cross Country, Chiltern, and Wrexham & Shropshire) are owned by the German railways (plus London Oveground, jointly with a Chinese company)
Another four (Trans Pennine, South Eastern, London Midland, and Southern (including Gatwick Express)) part owned by Keolis (French).
Two more (Merseyrail and Northern Rail) are part owned by Abellio (Dutch).
Also, the Spanish-owned BAA run the Heathrow Express.
Ironically, most of these are state-owned enterprises!
Oh, and John: Edinburgh's Princes Street station closed in 1965. YOu were probably at Waverley.
Timbo | 04.11.10 - 10:34 a.m. | #
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To me, part of the issue is that when you book an advance ticket, with mandatory reservation, you can't choose which seat you want to sit in. So when I get on, I ignore the seat I've been allocated, and sit where I wanted to sit in the first place.
If John's idea of requiring a certain proportion of unreserved seats were implemented, wouldn't that lead to people who book in advance being charged more becuase the reserved quota was full.
Michael - you may not have noticed, but the British sold off their railways (partly to foreigners) years ago. That's why it's the most expensive, most inefficient rail system in Europe...
ian | 04.11.10 - 10:39 a.m. | #
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Timbo - John may well have bought his ticket at Princes Street before 1965, given then average reliability of a long distance train journey.
ian | 04.11.10 - 10:40 a.m. | #
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And ridiculously, I think I'm right in saying that the reservation cards all say you can be fined up to £200 if you occupy a reserved seat for which you do not have a reservation.
It's pigging stupid.
Tom | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 10:45 a.m. | #
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I don't know about the other companies, but Virgin trains usually have an unreserved carriage (coach E usually).
disgruntled | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 10:51 a.m. | #
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Hi, you were listed as one of the top 20 "London" blogs by Wikio, the full listing will be published tomorrow but you can have a preview in my blog, apologies for the link but here it goes: (http://www.thelondonfoodie.co.uk/2010/11/sneaky-preview-of-top-20-london-blogs.html). Well done!
Luiz @ The London Foodie
dg writes: According to that list, my blog is called "diamind geezer". Forgive me if I'm not excited.
The London Foodie | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 11:18 a.m. | #
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The bulkheads are only (in my experience, at least) a problem on the bloody sardine can tiny dark and stuffy smelly and overheated trains of extreme unpleasantness for very thin pygmies and dwarves masquerading as "Virgin Trains Pendolinos".
It is cruel indeed that they run on so many services between London and several of England's most important cities (and Birmingham).
At least if you book the ticket yourself, on Virgin's website, you can check the seat diagram of the trains, and then can (usually) keep on entering your journey details over and over again until they finally let you have a seat next to a window!
Dominic | 04.11.10 - 11:39 a.m. | #
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(And I've never had any problems with Eurostar moving away from reserved seats next to bulkheads either - once the guard even suggested to me that I might like to do so)
Dominic | 04.11.10 - 11:40 a.m. | #
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And they wonder why it's so difficult to get people out of their cars.
Siwi | 04.11.10 - 11:58 a.m. | #
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It seems I was wrong about ownership of the railway companies. But I can assure you that here in continental Europe prices are the cheaper. (Plus our trains are quicker cleaner)The booking system charges the same price as ticket hall. I think this is because we the public would make fuss, we want a good public transport. I have the idea that the British public are mainly into Katie Price/Wayne Rooney, with a helping of hatred of Johnny foreigner, and smugness over the Yanks. If you don't hold your government to account, no body else will.
Michael | 04.11.10 - 12:08 p.m. | #
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Michael - I've no doubt at all that trains in Europe are quicker, cleaner, cheaper, more efficient and just better than British trains. That is almost certainly because Britain is the only country that has followed the dogmatic lunacy of privatised trains.
ian | 04.11.10 - 12:21 p.m. | #
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You can occupy a reserved seat outside of the reserved journey (ie if the seat is only reserved Reading - Newbury, it can be used by someone else until Reading and after Newbury), or if it's unoccupied a certain amount of time after departure from the start of the reservation.
PG | 04.11.10 - 12:41 p.m. | #
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The whole system is a mess, as you say. Many of the online journey planners insist that you book a seat even when buying a ticket valid on any train, hence the many reserved seats with no passengers (after all, you had a seat booked on an early train I presume you didn't catch).
The other problem is when booking advance tickets on long distance routes (which I do regularly) you have to have a reserved seat and according to the terms and conditions you *have to* sit in the seat booked. The only company I've ever seen enforce this last condition is East Coast. Some companies (e.g. East Coast) seem to have a habit of booking all the reserved seats together so you find all the passengers on the advance tickets crammed into a few rows of seats and the rest of the carriage half empty. The other problem I find is that especially on East Coast if I book a window seat I usually seem to end up in one of the few seats that has a wall next to it, not the window. Or on one occasion (also on East Coast) when reserving a seat in the "quiet coach" when I boarded I found the entire quiet coach full of very drunk and very loud Milwall supporters. I quickly moved to another carriage! Also Virgin Trains have a habit of booking me in the row of seats with more leg room that have the signs saying you must give up your seats if requested by a disabled/less mobile passenger which means strictly speaking my ticket has impossible conditions, because in the conditions I'm told I must use the reserved seat but in another I'm told I must give up my seat if required.
If you move seats and you're on a company that users the paper tickets in the back of a seat to mark reservations I normally remove it (if there is only my journey printed on it), so it's clear someone else can sit there. Although this too is strictly against the conditions (the paper tickets say there is penalty for removing them). But some companies (e.g. Virgin) use electronic reservation systems so you can't "unreserve" the seat you were booked in. I think train companies are gradually dropping seat reservations though anyway. South West Trains did last year and Arriva Trains Wales are about to do so as well.
Jon Combe | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 1:07 p.m. | #
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Dear DG.
Which fare is fair?
Albert.
Albert | 04.11.10 - 1:08 p.m. | #
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IIRC the fine is if you remove the reservation card and it's not reserved for you.
The railway bylaws state that if there is no reservation label on a seat, then the seat is not reserved. So if you remove someone elses reservation they have no legal claim on the seat!
Of course in practise if they had it and reservations hadn't been cancelled then the train staff would come down on the reserver.
I can tell you from personal experience that someone not giving up the seat they weren't supposed to be in causes all sorts of chaos and mayhem
Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 1:19 p.m. | #
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And yet so often (usually when a train is jam packed, at the weekend, because Train companies still insist on running trains with five First class coaches, but that's an entirely separate gripe!) a voice comes over on the tannoy announcing that due to computer failure, all reservations are null and void!
Susie | 04.11.10 - 5:52 p.m. | #
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Caligramas2.0 | Homepage | 04.11.10 - 7:25 p.m. | #
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Well Timbo I am showing my age, and I stand corrected. I just assumed it was Princes Street as I have always known that name. I was dropped off at the station by car so did not pay much attention, just went to the ticket hall and got my ticket for London. I could have flown for less cost and got a seat.
John | 04.11.10 - 8:07 p.m. | #
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John - are you sure you could have been dropped off at the airport with no reservation or plans and got a seat for less than the train?
Always worth comparing like for like, most air tickets should be compared to advance purchase train tickets and not walk up fares.
Another Andrew | 04.11.10 - 10:28 p.m. | #
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Yeah, Spitting Image warned us of what would happen when they sold the railways, look...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFcBRHC9MV0
Roberta | 05.11.10 - 3:53 a.m. | #
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Greg, you are a bit late, Timbo has already pointed out that the Princes Street Station closed in 1965.
Barry | 05.11.10 - 11:42 a.m. | #
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I reckon you were on East Coast. You seem like a Quiet Coach sort of chap...
Novaelius | 05.11.10 - 4:26 p.m. | #
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