Train seat reservations

[littlebilliie]

That if you booked a seat it’s yours?

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

Has that worked for you in reality without much resistance?

Yep, you reply with an even more stupid response!

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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!