Train seat reservations

But the most expensive tickets are the ones you can use on any train - should they come with a reservation for all of the 100s of trains they might be used on?

On LNER (I have no knowledge of another inter city service) you can add a seat reservation to these via the website once you know which train you will be using so in effect they do if you choose to add it.

Seat Reserved tickets are often the cheapest tickets you can buy in the UK. I personally think they shouldn’t be — that only the most expensive tickets should allow seat reservations.

I mean I commute everyday and on a shorter commuter route they don’t have reservations that I have seen. I agree with you that I don’t see why all reservations should be done away (including long distance, intercity train journeys) because that PP has cancellations and cannot book seats on her specific commuter train.

It’s an absolute bug bear of mine. I always book seats, and will always take my assigned seat. I also always travel light, so my bag will fit under my seat or on the overhead rack. Your massive suitcase with half your worldly possessions will not encroach on my space and not is it my problem to move up.

My favourite story was on a GWR to Oxford (which was full of people going to Bicester which looks like hell on earth). A sizable group of monks/friars(?) from US and elsewhere boarded with their own seat reservations. They politely asked an oaf of a man and his wife to give them their reserved seats and the chancer decided to try and con the tourists by saying seat reservations don’t count. I pipe up with a ‘that’s not quite true though is it’ and am met with a chorus of people joining in that it’s not on to lie. The man started whitttering that he had paid for a train ticket so deserved a seat (expecting sympathy), to which the chorus responded so had everyone. He whittered on for so long that all vacant and unreserved seats ended up taken, then the guard came and suggested they move so they make a big show of saying ‘they would be more comfortable in first class’. When I popped to the loo they were hemmed in next to the toilet door and the bikes….

It is the poster you just quoted who thinks they should be done away with. Because she can't always sit on her commute she thinks it OK for my elderly mother to have to risk not having a seat for 3.5+ if a football match or a big concert or other event happens to coincide with a train she booked months in advance. Commutes tend to be short so even if you have a long one the train has usually thinned out after half an hour or so booking on commuter trains is completely different to cross country/long distance services.

We’re talking about seat reservations and somebody saying they should be done away with.

I would never sit in a reserved seat and have asked people to move out of mine without incident. HOWEVER, I have also traveled on a packed London to Manchester service where a previous service had been canceled and the seat reservations were not switched on. I arrived early and got a seat, but by the time we left London there were people standing throughout the carriage. Some bloke fought his way past all of them to try to hoof me out of "his" seat - which I had no way of knowing was reserved. I explained this quite patiently. 20 minutes later he returned to say he had informed the train manager who would be there imminently, and would be remonstrating with me.

The train manager did not arrive, and I checked and double-checked that the reservations had not been switched on (and they hadn't). That is the ONLY time I have defended my right to remain in someone else's seat, because I think all bets are off if there are no visible reservations...

Chiltern Railways don't have reservations, which I agree with.

Saves the headache of turfing people out of your seat.

Do you mean a season ticket costs more than paying per journey? There's quite a simple solution to that.

You're not making sense. People who commute on season tickets can't make seat reservations. There isn't a possibility to be organised to do that..
You don't have frequent cancellations? If you commuted you'd see how often it happens.

I was talking about people commuting. Pay a lot more per trip than people paying in advance who have much cheaper tickets who can also reserve a seat.

Well yes, thats another reason why seat reservations cause issues. When someone has one, gets to a train and it doesn't even exist anymore.

Even a heavily pregnant woman or someone with a small baby on their lap?

I would always reserve a seat with extra leg room when I used to travel. The trouble is I don’t usually look disabled. If I’ve got my crutches or similar with me it’s fine but at other times it’s been very awkward to ask someone to move when to them I look well enough to stand. Im a private person so don’t want to go into details about my disability with a stranger.

If someone refused to move from my reserved seat, I’d say, “I’ll just have to sit on your knee then.” If they still didn’t move I’d follow through…

This would be great but then the train companies would have to do away with the wildly expensive use on any service tickets which cost slightly more than a black market kidney.

I wonder if this explains the problem I've been having with Trainline recently. I book my journey, request seats and no seat reserved. I then have to phone and they contact the train company who reserve the seat. It is a recent thing.

Last time i travelled by train in the uk it was absolutely pack, aisles completely full of people standing and of course people sat in our reserved seats who didn't want to move. Thankfully someone else let me have their seat as I was carrying my baby in my arms so standing really wasn't safe.

Much prefer trains in my country, they're either commuter trains where no one can reserve a seat but not long journeys, or they're intercity trains where everyone gets a reserved seat when buying a ticket (and you can choose which exact seat, and for a small fee reserve the one next to you too so you don't have to sit next to a stranger). No arguments because everyone has their own seat and no one ever has to stand.

This is a problem with LNER as well. Train line doesnt seem to always recognise when seats are booked via the operators website. Luckily in our case, the couple were very kind about displacing me, DH and two DC under 5, plus the plethora of toys and activity books spread out already, and offered to sit elsewhere themselves.

Pardon?!?

I’m disabled @littlebilliie
You weren’t ableist if there was many other seats AND the disabled spaces were free.

It sounds to me that they wanted the table seats for themselves whereas the disabled seats are NOT in 4 so they couldn’t sit together.
Using disability in that way is shit and makes our (disabled) life much harder

I always assert my right to my booked seat. Usually, I just say 'sorry, this is my seat' with a big smile and the person moves. But recently I had a seat booked for a 4-hour journey, on a train I knew would get very busy later, and found a woman my sort of age (over 50) in my seat with her elderly mother next to her.

In some circumstances (e.g. nice elderly person / mum with baby) I might wander off and try to find another seat but this very naicely-spoken lady stayed seated and told me she had reserved seats elsewhere but someone else was sitting in them, mum then said to her daughter, 'Perhaps we should have asked them to move?' i.e. daughter hadn't wanted to ask so had passed her problem on to me instead. 'My mother is elderly', the daughter said as if that settled it.

'Well your mum doesn't have to move but I have booked this seat,' I said with a smile, 'Oh I see, so you must have it,' the daughter said frostily, made a performance of getting out of the seat and went off to have a martyrdom a couple of rows away in another reserved seat. Mum and I both put our headphones on and settled back.

I had a terrible journey with two changes and could see I wasn't getting a seat on the second train after sitting on the platform in December waiting for over an hour obviously I missed my third train. The train guy on the platform spoke to the guard and they got me a seat in first class. A five hour journey ended up being over 7 hours.

In the last heatwave the two previous trains had been cancelled and they told me not to even try to get in and redirected me to another train. I live in South Devon and we seem to get loads of cancellations. Not sure if it's better elsewhere.

The trouble is that on a really overcrowded train you might struggle to find the guard. Not his fault but still a problem.

I suspected so which is why if I faced an issue I would just find a staff member. I will happily hold up the entire train to ensure somebody gets out of my seat.

She may have to do in future but hasn't in the past.

We did have a panic earlier in the year with a cancelled /delayed trains situation meaning all reservations were off. The train staff were brilliant and ensured she got a seat - they probably would have done so regardless but they did say they would find her a seat as she was an elderly traveller with a reservation which kind of implied that if she didn't have a reservation they might not have been so helpful.