Train seat reservations

Thankfully I’ve never had to say I’d sit on anyone’s knee, still less do it. If it was someone genuinely more in need of a seat than me (eg a pregnant woman with a baby/toddler as suggested upthread) then I’d accede the seat. I’d probably ask them why they didn’t have a seat reserved. People have always moved when I’ve asked them & shown them proof of my reservation, but if they didn’t & I offered to sit on their knee, I’m kind of assuming they would prefer to move. It would give everyone a laugh if they didn’t because I genuinely would do it!

But it made them respond....and was I wrong? She doesn't own the seat

I have to travel by train a couple of times a month for work and on my morning train the majority of the time the reservations are turned off. It is super frustrating because you’ve made your way to that specific carriage, passing carriages with free seats and then can’t sit in your seat.

I also had to explain to an irate man that concept of the reservations being off and the domino effect of me moving from his seat to my booked seat and the person in that seat moving the person out of their seat and so on.

Quite. I see people say that they'd sit on their knee of they didn't start moving out of their allocated seat on these kinds of threads. Easy to say that's what you'd do in that situation but have you and would you really?

Would be awkward if they were in the window seat. Poor person in the aisle seat.

I once had a woman pretend not to speak English well enough to understand when I tried to insist she move from my reserved seat. She spoke it well enough when I asked her initially.

Another time someone who got on at an earlier stop was in my reserved window seat when she had the aisle seat reserved. She moved but seemed surprised that I actually wanted the seat I had booked.

Travelling recently on a busy service, my companion politely asked someone to move who was in her reserved seat. Person reluctantly did so, but someone completely unrelated to the mover insisted she was going to get the guard etc and went off looking and generally inflaming the situation. If she felt that strongly, why didn't she offer the evicted person her own seat? Ridiculous. Of course the guard didn't ask my fried to move, she had a booking.

Yep, you reply with an even more stupid response!

Has that worked for you in reality without much resistance?

Remember I was replying to the ops completely vague first post...as they say ask a stupid question...

Refusal to leave should mean you have to leave the train at the next stop, no matter how inconvenient that is to the refuser. Enforced 100% every time, only leniency if the seat reservations have been removed for the journey or cannot be displayed.

Better still, anyone with a Railcard then has it withdrawn for a period of time.

😆

??
At the end of your post you say the train is so much more expensive - but at £50 per week, surely the car is about £120 more expensive per month than the ,£80 the train costs?

And does the £50 take into account all the motoring costs, or just the fuel?

Or maybe, if prices were lower, more people would use the train so revenue would increase too?

My son was looking at taking the train to go (his new) work. £80 a month, unreliable trains and walking to and from the station (a good 20 mins each side of the train journey)
By car? About £50 a week and quicker…..
That’s just for person. Imagine he could car share etc….

I’ve had the same experience in a much longer journey (2.5 hours by train). It would have costed me 4x more to use the train than the car for 3 of us. We didn’t go in the end.

Thats a massive issue. There’s no reason why a train journey, with all the people on board ends up being so much more expensive than the equivalent car journey

I have seen that with premium economy but never first class.

I always book premium economy. I see more value than economy but not enough to justify first class.

And even in premium economy some people sit my reserved seats but less stressful to boot them out as premium economy is typically less busy.

Oh my!

The UK should renationalise the railways and train travel should be subsided because it should be encouraged over car travel.

It's a hard balance - to lower prices they would have to be subsedised so should every pay towards trains with those who actually use them paying a small top up or should those who use them bare the brunt of the cost?

Yeah prices are ridiculous in the UK, in my country they are still quite reasonable, if I wanted to travel a similar distance buying last minute today it'd cost 46 euros, peak time tomorrow around 60, another 16-22 euros to upgrade to 1st class.

It happened to me once. The train was full. I told the squatter that I was going to sit on the table with my feet in his lap and began to do so. I am quite a big lady and he saw I meant business. He called me a bitch. But he moved. I enjoyed that. And yes I can be a bitch.

On the last rare occasion I used a train (company policy wont allow driving post long haul) from Paddington GWR only had 5 carriages instead of 10. All seat reservations lights were green and it was announced any reservations were cancelled.
Train was rammed and had 2 belters stamping their feet as my colleague and I wouldn't moved, insisting we were in their seats.
They went off to find the train manager, even returned and said he agreed we had to move. We didn't and it made the hour journey pass quickly

This is why I travel first class (book early to get advance fares and then use Seatfrog)

I only realised recently that the train manager has the authority to open first class when trains are overcrowded- a man who knew this came and sat in first class and when the train manager tried to evict him pointed this out and also pointed out that as the carriages were full of people standing then he had no chance of getting to his reserved standard seat- but if she was willing to to go to his seat and evict the person sitting in it and prevent anyone else from taking it then he would sit in it! He remained in first class for the duration...

That makes no sense. Why penalise people for being organised and helping trains manage their availability? The more people make reservations the better an idea people have of train capacity. Hence it should be incentivised.

I was suggesting it was the train company that would miss the chance to rake in the cash - not the passengers.

But it not that straightforward a London to Newcastle train came be as low £30 in advance but was well over £100 on the day the last time I had to buy on the day (which was some yaers ago so I assume its more now). It can mean well over £150 difference on a return trip per person so 300 extra for my parents to visit. Not really an option.

Yes those tickets are no good in this system except on the commuter trains but its quite easy to plan when you'll travel and there's not a huge difference between prices when buying weeks in advance or on the day.