to think you don't talk in the quiet carriage?

[Ambivalence]

Group of 4. Twentysomething women chattering at top volume and a child singing!

They could use any other carriage. so rude!

It's "quiet", not "silent", and is meant mainly to reduce the noise from mobiles, personal music players and electronic equipment.

If this were next month, you could be talking about me. Girls weekend away, four of us. No option for 'not quiet carriage' so we have been issued QC seats.

If you have issue with it; take it up woth the rail companies for sellong these seats to people who dont want tgem.

They allocated a group of 10 of us to a quiet carriage once and wouldn't move us when asked (booked 3 months in advance)

Well we've been allocated a 'quiet' carriage as a family on many occasions, so assume they are not expecting total quietude as in a contemplative religious order. Just think it's supposed to be to stop anti-social people talking loudly on mobiles all-journey long ;-(.

Last time we travelled we we were sitting near a group of four fiftysomething - very middle class - but they were far noisier than the DCs or anyone else in the carriage.

But noise is subjective anyway....

Surely, although you have to be in a quiet carriage it doesn't mean that you should ignore the purpose of it.

Would it really hurt, just for a little while, to keep the noise down?

It is a different situation as on chiltern trains there is no allocated seating, so these people had a choice if the other 5 normal carriages but chose to sit in the quiet zone.

I like to get a bit of work done or read ( or mumsnet ) in peace

Oh, and OP - it doesn't mean you can't talk at all!

I get on the quiet coach every day as it's the one closest to the exit, and it's definitely not a no-noise zone on Greater Anglia - very loud, even at 6am! It's just electronic noise that's banned. However, I never used to take the DSSs on there when they were younger as they were very noisy (over excited as we were generally on-route to the seaside) and now I CAN'T take them on there because they spend their lives plugged into their phones!

East Midlands trains out of St Pancras occasionally have the quiet coach as the only non-reserved-seating coach. So anyone getting on an otherwise busy train without a reservation has no choice but to sit in the QC. In that situation I would never take the piss noise-wise but I'm not going to sit like a Trappist monk and not speak at all to my husband in the next seat for an hour because of the train company's bad planning.

YANBU

It's a bit unreasonable to expect people to not talk at all, I don't think that's the purpose of a 'quiet coach'. They should be considerate and keep the volume down a bit though!

The National Rail Enquiries website says :

Quiet Coach: If you choose a seat in this coach you are asked to not use your mobile phone, use electrical equipment in silent mode, ensure music cannot be heard by other passengers, and generally to keep noise levels to a minimum.

So I think that YANBU to be cross if they weren't making any attempt at all to keep the noise down.

Yabu if you think it should be completely silent I.e no talking.

I saw a woman tutting and passively aggressively murmuring "quiet carriage" at two men talking at normal volume, and me and my colleague, also discussing work. It was a commuter train from London and packed... tutting woman looked like she was on a non work trip and reading a novel.

We thought it quite amusing and childishly took delight in buying crisps and eating them.

But people should"t be very noisy or talk on phones or use loud electronics, agreed.

YANBU. I do think people should be keeping their chatting to a minimum in the quiet coach and I would be annoyed too. I definitely think a singing child is very inappropriate for the quiet coach.

If you are "allocated" quiet coach seats when buying tickets online you can just choose another coach and seat before you confirm and buy. If it's a packed commuter train where the only option is getting on the quiet coach then that's different and tbh on those trains I am just glad of a seat if I get one and not too bothered about noise, as the journeys aren't that long. For longer journeys I often choose the quiet coach if I want peace and quiet and it usually is almost silent :) but I feel annoyed when people just carry on there like they would in any coach. I have no problem with quiet talking or eating crisps!

oh what rubbage

buy some earplugs fgs

well the quiet carriages are also the only wheelchair/buggy carriages on my local trains so YABU and the train company doesn't really mean it it's obviously just a gimmick!

I was allocated a reserved seat in the quiet carriage with a 4 year old from Edinburg to Exeter, there were no other seats free. She was not quiet and why should she be quiet on a 10 hour journy.

I do think people should be keeping their chatting to a minimum in the quiet coach and I would be annoyed too. I definitely think a singing child is very inappropriate for the quiet coach

Agreed.

What's the difference between asking people not to have mobile phone conversations and asking them to keep actual conversations to a minimum too? Surely the actual conversations are twice as irritating as you get both sides? Or is it just the ringing of the phone that's the issue?

"Surely the actual conversations are twice as irritating as you get both sides?"
no no they're much LESS irritating as they make for better ear-wigging when you get both sides!

What Wildfig said ^. Why do you think 'talking on mobile phones' is not ok but talking in person is! It's not the suspense of not knowing what the other person's saying that winds people up!

YABU. I like seeing people having a nice chat and sometimes earwigging a bit. You can't expect people to whisper or not talk on a train, and sometimes children are noisy, it's just a fact of life. You'd have a better less stressful life if you just accepted it as one of those things and either tried to tune it out or have a good old listen to a conversation.

Personally I find the idea of a quiet carriage a bit bizarre - if a person is deliberately making noise to annoy others then they'll be dealt with by the guard, other than that most of the noise people make is just a part of going about their business and people shushing and tutting is weird - you're on public transport, not in a temple!

When you take public transport in some other countries, where there are four people in a two-person seat, the noise is deafening and there might be a cage of chickens on your neighbour's lap and a goat running up and down the aisle, you realise not wanting people to chat to each other is a bit pampered and childish really.

I have no objection to people talking in normal tones to one another. However, I don't want to listen to conversations in raised voices and if I've chosen the quiet carriage I expect people to moderate their tone and have some consideration for others.

Oh and you'd hate the Cork-Limerick train, where more than once I've seen a two person conversation spread throughout the carriage so by the end of it 8 or 10 people are shouting to each other (usually about GAA). There's something a bit sad IMO about imposing silence on people and cutting off the possibility of two strangers (or more!) striking up a conversation. I've had many a nice chat with a random person on a train. Although I did get in a bizarre situation on the London-Bristol train where I got stuck standing in the first class train (train was absolutely packed) and two men in their 50s were falling over themselves to offer me their seat. It got a bit uncomfortable in the end, with them arguing and me having to choose between them. I did end up getting to sit in first class though

People shouting at one another across the carriage is just plain rude.