To think I might have overreacted re small children on train

[blacknotebook]

Was on v crowded train out of London this afternoon and had to put two small DCs in corridor - one fell asleep in pile of coats/bags, the other sat on the floor but was in danger of getting squashed/stood on by people and lugguage. I got a bit grumpy about the whole thing. The conducter I stopped to complain to said we should have reserved seats. When we explained there were no options for reservations when we booked online, he told us that usually meant there was no room/seats left on the train and a ticket only gave us entitlement to travel not a seat.

WIBU to expect there to be at least two seats on a Sunday where we could have sat with DCs on our laps and to get a bit cross about the overcrowded conditions and think it's not good enough? At the very least, there could have been a warning on the booking system so we understood we'd be running a risk of having to stand for an hour with two worn out children? If we'd known, we would have tried to book a different train or another day, or driven/gone by coach.

Or should I have sucked it up? Plenty of other people were standing and sitting in the corridor and I'm sure they were as hot, tired and fed up as us. Thing is, littlest is only 3 and he was shattered.

dexter it stands to reason that an overcrowded train with people standing and blocking the exits will lead to more deaths in case of fire as it will take much longer for everyone to get out.

ComposHat "You are talking utter shite here" Impressive level of argumentation! If I was not convinced after that that it's very safe to have standing passengers in overcrowded trains, I don't know what would convince me! The UK safety record in the data linked to the article you mention is deceptively good because of a historically good record. If you look at recent years things go downhill which is quite consistent with a deteriorating track system. I never said anything about whose responsibility it is to monitor safety.

The reason it took so long for people to get out was because the doors were locked and nobody opened them for some time. My dh had to use the emergency hammer to break the window and open the door from the outside.

Tbh if your train crashes you will be thrown out of your seat anyway. Where you are in the train when the train crashes has much more to do with whether you will survive or not. In my dh's case the two trains hit head on and he was lucky he was towards the rear of the train so he survived the impact and the fire.

The amount a train ticket costs I expect a red velvet cushion on my gold trimmed seat!

Boo If you talk shite, then people will call you on it. Upthread you said that British 'rail safety was awful' and amongst the worst in the developed world. You then held up Germany as a shining example or rail safety, despite the fact it has a worse rail safety record than Britain.

But still you persist:

The UK safety record in the data linked to the article you mention is deceptively good because of a historically good record. If you look at recent years things go downhill which is quite consistent with a deteriorating track system.

The ORR figures quoted in the Guardian are from 2007-2012.It isn't historical data. If you can get figures which conclusively demonstrate that the safety record of British railways has gone from the best in Europe to one of the worst in the developed world in the past 18 months, I would be interested to see them. Until then stop spouting ill-informed rubbish.

As a daily commuter into London, school holidays are really amusing.

Invariably you get a family group get on the train just as it about to leave, and appear shocked not only how busy it is, but that there isn't a group of four seats so they can sit together. At that time of the day there might be four seats free on the whole 12 carriage train.

Sympathy - Nope. Next time get to the train earlier like everyone else did. This time if you want a seat, get off and wait for the next one in 30 minutes time.

And I really do like the people who have been shopping and have all their expensive bags from the posh shops on the seat next to them. Thanks for saving me a seat, do you want a hand stuffing your bags on the luggage rack, or would you prefer them on the floor under your feet.

"Next time get to the train earlier like everyone else did."

Does this make more seats magically appear, then?

Commuting obviously makes one very bitter.

Sigh. No, ems, getting to the train earlier allows you a better chance of finding seats with your darling little ones. If you won't stand, wait for the next train as you'll be among the first on.

I understand it's a shock for visitors caught up in London everyday commuting, but maybe they need to understand commuters spend an hour, twice a day, rammed so tightly into moving metal boxes that they can see up each other's noses! (And I still miss the place.) While I was becoming more disabled, I allowed extra time so I could wait until a train with vacant seats came along.

It's bad, but it's the way it is.

Commuting makes you ruthless when it comes to trains. We took my dithering pil who'd never been on a train in their lives on a busy train and I think they were shocked at how I hussled them on the train quickly and ordered them into free seats!

If you've never seen a commuter train, though, how are you psychically going to know what to do and how early to arrive?

Fair enough try and get a different train next time. But by all means be surprised. It is, I suspect, a surprise to them, after all.

The point (which you have missed, Garlic - thanks for the PA 'sigh' though!) is that the overcrowding situation on trains (especially those in and around London) is such that there will always be people (usually lots of them) forced to stand. This is wrong IMO. The 'it's the way it is', 'sigh' thing really irritates me because rail travel COULD be better - it is better (and cleaner and cheaper and faster) in pretty much every other European country I've ever visited. Why is it so dire here?

However early you arrive for a train someone will end up without a seat - and that could be someone with small children, someone elderly, someone heavily pregnant, someone who is unwell... Should they all arrive an hour early or wait for the next train and stop moaning, then?

DH travels to London for work regularly. The return train usually turns around within 10 minutes, so even if you were at Euston half an hour before departure time you would not even be notified of the correct platform until minutes before the train is scheduled to leave. The huge swarm of people that starts running to the platform as soon as it flashes up is actually quite frightening - we used to live in London and I have done that journey myself dozens of times. If you were elderly or infirm you would have no chance of securing a seat at peak times if you didn't have a reservation and I would say probably 20% of the time the reservations system doesn't work and the reservations are not observed when it is not working. This is not an acceptable standard of service IMO - especially as a standard class return ticket costs over £100 (for a 2 hour journey!) - utter utter madness. Your suggestion of getting there early or waiting for the next train would be impossible (even if it wasn't rather short sighted and silly) on this route, and probably many others.

I've ridden the metro in Paris. Mostly the trains I was on were fine. But there was a noticeable difference once you stepped outside the touristy areas and took a train that went through the more deprived parts of the city. Those ones were grim.

Have no experience of the Tube though, so nothing to compare it to in that respect.

Yup, and the Metro is under half the price of the Tube.

I don't get all the people who think that there's no problem with small children sitting on the floor between the carriages, in between the doors. 3 year olds are pretty unpredictable creatures, with very poor "keeping-out-of-the-way" skills, if mine was anything to go by, and if you have 2 toddlers, your heart must be in your mouth constantly in case one of them decides to make a bolt for it when the doors are open and the passage is full of people and you can't grab them in time. Or that they just wobble unpredictably, in the way they do, under the feet of the people constantly walking past.

The trouble is how do you fit everyone on a train that is very popular? You can't just magic carriages up. You can't stop people getting on a train that is full as people need to get places and they could be waiting ages for a train that has a seat for them. I'm not really sure what the answer is.

emsyj - it is so overcrowded here because:
a) we built our railways pretty early
b) London is a very very dynamic city, with a lot of people travelling through it
c) Governments aren't willing to spend money
d) You can't put double decker trains on because the road bridges are too low
e) you can't put on longer trains because platforms are too short
f) most rail travellers travel at pretty much the same times
g) Governments don't want to raise taxes too much

The only European city with anything like Londons passenger numbers is the Paris metro. (The next would be St Petersburg.)

I'm in complete agreement with emsyj.

And in my own experience the bookings system doesn't always work, and isn't always observed, and arriving early doesn't help.

And I don't think it's acceptable to have very young toddlers and children sitting on the floor between the carriages.

Emsyj thing is people will travel on the TGV or use the Metro withim the very centre of Paris and from that extrapolate all French trains are wonderful. If you only used the tube as a tourist outside rush hour you'd be impressed at how easy it is to get around central London.

When you visit say Frankfurt or Milan you dont tend to use the 8:25 commuter lines from the suburbs.