To think that each long distance train should have a “silent” coach?

[TheIsleOfTERF]

I travel by train a lot with work. Due to my autism and need to work on the train, I always book the “quiet” coach, which is sadly anything but!

Whenever I’ve discussed it on here etc., some people always argue “it’s the quiet coach, not the silent coach! I can have my chat/ phone call/ argument/ hen party as long as it’s not too loud!”

Therefore, should we not just have a silent coach instead? One carriage of no talk or calls? The other seven carriages can be for all that?!?

ÝANBU OP.

I find some travellers so entitled in the quiet coach with their phone calls. They have several other carriages to bore other travellers with their inane drivel!

People should be quiet in the quiet carriage, of course - but ultimately public transport is full of the public, so there will always be a few people who don't behave well. You are not being at all unreasonable to wish for your silent carriage but it would be much more productive to just buy some good headphones.

Get some noise cancelling headphones, you poor autistic thing.

Sure… But also, shouldn’t people who wish to make noise go and sit in the 90% of the train where that’s okay?!?

Or the people sitting in the quiet coach could just be quiet?

Yes, but nobody seems prepared to enforce it. So you need to make your own arrangements.

This is why I don’t book the quiet coach - it pisses me off too much when people aren’t quiet there. Noise cancelling headphones work well.

Totally agree with you. I’m not autistic but I don’t want to hear people screeching (I live in a city known for hen / stags so the train up can be pretty full on), having conversations on their phone or watching something with the volume up.

Get some loop ear plugs. Absolute game changer.

The quiet coaches can't be enforced anyway & it means different things to different people. Someone might take their dysregulated autistic child because it's better for them but they could be noisy & disruptive themselves. Someone might go there to have a chat with a friend away from people on phones etc. Someone might use it because they want to work but then make business calls that annoy people.

A fear years ago I was in the quiet carriage when this boorish man got on and started yapping into his phone. We all eye-rolled and tutted a bit until I finally had enough and went over to politely ask him to stop his call or go out of the carriage.

He glanced up at me and did the "I'm on the phone" gesture, as if I was an idiot.

So I repeated myself loudly (enough for his caller to hear I'm sure) and stood there staring at him, till he slunk off into the vestibule bit.

Win!

Quiet carriages will never be enforced, unfortunately.

People should respect the quiet carriage, for sure.

But a silent carriage would be completely unenforceable. And what happens if, as is very normal, the train is overcrowded? People
have the choice of either silence or standing for their entire journey? No, sorry.

There would have to be some noise, though, like the conductor asking for people's tickets, people saying 'excuse me' when they want the person next to them to move and these sorts of things. The other thing is if it was quieter, you would be more able to hear the annoying noises such as people sniffing or crunching their crisps, which many would see as worse than background chatter.

Yes totally annoying when you have to hear one side of a loud phone conversation in the quiet carriage. In some ways that singular person’s voice is worse than the general white noise of a normal carriage.

I hate being told to wear “noise cancelling headphones” - why should I compensate? No, people need to show more consideration and shut the fuck up, or move to another carriage.

They can be. I ask people to be quiet and I've asked the train manager to do so too.

If you've got a call to make, step outside.

I don't disagree with you, but seeing as the train companies can't (won't) enforce seat reservations if someone else sits in them, I can't see how they would be able to spend the whole journey ensuring everyone remains silent.

So, in your case, I do agree with other posters that investing in a decent pair of noise cancelling headphones would make sense for you. My student dd loves hers and she isn't even sensitive to noise or business - just sometimes wants to either sleep or concentrate on some work or reading she needs to do.

Yes, they do. But they won’t.

So I have a choice. I can seethe. I can provoke a confrontation, which in the end probably won’t get me the end of the result I want anyway.

Or I can wear noise cancelling headphones and save myself and my blood pressure a lot of angst.

I think aiming for total silence in a train carriage is unrealistic. However, I agree that people being loud in the quiet carriage, or anywhere on a train tbh, is rude and obnoxious.

I’ve spent many years internally losing my shit about this when travelling for work on a regular basis, spending half an hour of a journey building up the courage to tell someone ‘do u realise this is the quiet carriage’ etc. because no one else will. DC bought me noise cancelling headphones a couple of years ago. I was horrified about how expensive they were and didn’t travel with them as I was so worried about losing them! But now I couldn’t live without them! It occurred to me today, when I was doing a long train journey, that maybe the popularity of noise cancelling headphones has given all the noisy inconsiderate shouters license to continue behaving like that… but at least I feel much less stressed out by the whole thing when I’m travelling myself.

For me, it's a bit like the thinking

I should be able to go out and leave all my windows wide open.
Or leave my car without locking it.
Or just step out to cross the road anywhere, anytime 'because it is my right of way'.

Theoretically, you are not wrong. BUT, in the real world, you would be daft to.
It is like @SerafinasGoose says. It is never going to happen that you get to regularly travel with the general public on trains without encountering some people who are badly behaved or just plain inconsiderate.
You can't change their behaviour, but you can save yourself a lot of stress and angst by working round it.
No, you don't have to, but if you are noise sensitive, or struggle with "busy-ness", it just seems like a good investment.

Poor autistic thing here too. I think I'm driven mad when people are talking where they shouldn't be, not only because the sound grates on me like nails on a blackboard (see also chewing and BLOODY INFERNAL SNIFFING!) but because being quiet is a very clear and simple rule so why can't people just obey it?

They'll never behave properly though so I do use earbuds (headphones for a longer period, earbuds hurt after a while). It's quite satisfying to know they're still making noise but you just can't hear it.