Great Western Coffee Shop

Odd unable to get reserved seat on the Saturday 830am Newton Abbot to London or the 1803pm back. I might try later in week, was told there should still be unreserved on the day. Never had this problem before when HST and there was always plenty of unreserved.

The last two times I have ridden on Class 80x, the reservation system has been out of commission. Cue much embarrassment as people who have sat in what appear to be unreserved seats are asked to move by other people who have reserved them...

…..but if the reservation system is out of commission I thought all reservations were null and void?

Correct. But that doesn’t stop some on insisting on their ‘reserved seat’ even when the carriage is probably half empty.

Indeed. I expect this causes more arguments and hassle on trains than anything else. I've witnessed such conversations numerous times.

And it shouldn't really be surprising. If you are sold a reservation, even though you don't actually pay anything for it but do go to the trouble of obtaining it, you expect to be able to use it.

The text describing them is sometime a little woolly, for example:

"valid only" ... "seat reservation" ... so the ticket is only valid in that seat, right??

A couple of weeks ago I arrived early and got on a nearly empty train at Temple Meads, heading for Swindon with two kids. We got table seats; always good if you're in a family group. By the time the train left Bristol it was full. At Bath, a family of four got on with their reservation ticket; there was (I think!) an announcement to the effect that the reservation system wasn't working, but it was barely audible. I was very glad when they walked past us, but they did turf four people out of their seats at the next table. I'm afraid I think I might have asked them to take it up with the guard if they had attempted to turf us out, but it also occurred to me that I would have been pretty miffed if I'd turned up with what I considered to be a reservation and found someone sitting in 'my' seats' - especially on a very full train, with kids in tow.

Not good enough!

More generally on reservations. When booking a ticket online for an Off-Peak or Anytime ticket( i.e. not dedicated to a specific train) it offers a reservation usually. This results in seats apparently reserved but not occupied if the passenger (customer) travels on a different train. Eventually if its full, the seats get taken, but it's not ideal. Can't think of a simple way round this.

Stop offering reservations online, except for customers with disabled or senior railcards. They are in general an unmitigated pain. Make those who want them for the sake of causing smarmy confrontations go to a railway station and queue up.

What a ridiculous comment. People want (and are encouraged by GWR to make) reservations in order to secure a seat, for what are often journeys of many hours duration. Nothing to do with "smarmy confrontations"

A "survival of the fittest" approach where those who move fastest & have the sharpest elbows have the best chance of a seat would most likely have much worse outcomes......fancy being the TM who has to sort that out? Or perhaps you'd like to take your chance & stand from Plymouth to Paddington one Sunday afternoon?

Gentlemen  ...

The current system for the booking of reserved seats that brings the system into disrepute and conflict could be usefully revised. If the proportion of reserved seats actually taken was much higher, it should mean both fewer seats showing as reserved so more spaces for the 'casual', and less chance of regular 'casuals' sitting in seats marked reserved in the first place as they would know they would very likely (an not just possibly) get chucked out.  But ( ? $64,000 ) how to achieve that, without putting people who want a reserved seat having one?

Seat reservations used to have a fee attached with them and - though I'm not going to be popular - I might suggest the re-introduction of a 10p fee. Using the plastic carrier bag model to change behaviour.  Collect all the 10p fees and pass them to a good cause if you like ... waive the fee for bookings on a disabled card, if you like.

I've probably not thought of some problems with this idea but ... but I certainly don't like alternatives such as queuing at a ticket office offered so far. Nor do I like  anything else which will put all but the fittest off travelling by train, or encourages further the system that the seats are all taken by the most fit people who don't need them as they rush from The Lawn, with carriage lobbies reserved for those who are pregnant, with small children, sick, or too frail to run.

It does generally need a positive request on behalf of the person booking for a seat reservation to be generated with a non-Advance ticket now, compared with the early days of online booking when it was pretty automatic or at least the default.

There is a belief by some that just buying a ticket from selecting a train at a set time in some manner guarantees a seat on that service, even if none is specified. Hence the complaints about trains being 'overbooked' at peak times.

I tend to book a seat on my up train to London as I know which train I plan to catch.  I may miss it though if there are delays getting to the station.

In my experience of paper reservations the normal reaction to an empty reserved seat is to check the originating station and, if it has been passed, use the seat.  The same principle can apply to the electronic signs in the IETs.

Then Broadgage comes back from the buffet ;)

Make a reserbvation *only* by buying online & thus tying the reservation to the ticket. If tyou need to change it, then it's changable online via your account. If you want a reservation, book online. Ok, one might not use it, but at least there arent reservations across multiple trains.

Ditto with agencies =- they buy & amend reservations via an online account - one reservation per ticket bought.

Exception - Disabled & Senior railcards, who would still be able to book via any chaneel.

Only if they are working!

Indeed, and if they aren't (generally only the 9-car services due to various issues which will hopefully be resolved shortly) then there is no excuse for not using the paper back-up method that's been used for decades.

Doesn't Broadgage have an overcoat to leave on his seat?

That is what I'm sure most of us do, but we are 'in the know'. Just recently, I've overheard on several occasions people looking at a reserved seat and saying to the friends that they can't sit there because it is reserved, even though the reservation was for previously in the journey.

Indeed - many readers of this forum will be aware that an unoccupied seat marked "reserved from Par to Totnes" is available for them from Exeter to Reading, but the geographic knowledge needed is likely beyond people taking a touring holiday in the UK.     And is a seat "reserved from Chippenham to London Paddington" available for a passenger from Newton Abbott to Bristol Temple Meads?

Electronic / updating systems can clarify some of the concerns by removing expired reservations, as indeed can some chap or chaps  removing expired paper tags.   I still think it would be helpful to reduce the proportion of reservations made but not taken up then we could see the wood for the trees.

It's precisely the long journeys that are disadvantaged by reservations. It's even worse on Cross Country (no thanks to those Voyagers managing in four cars the same seating capacity as a three-car 175). You can stand from Plymouth to York because of people getting unnecessary online reservations for a random scatter of miscellaneous 20-minute journeys. To a lesser extent, we get it on the London trains with reservations for journeys wholly within England on the Welsh trains and reservations wholly east of Cogload Junction on the South West ones.

I'd contend that someone travelling from Plymouth to York is very rarely doing so as a last minute trip. So they should really have their own seat reservation. Even if they haven't made a seperate reservation with a walk-up ticket then the '10 Minute Reservation' option is available to them too. And, as they are boarding the train at its origin (save for the one or two that start back at Penzance), then seat availability will be at its greatest.

There's a very interesting (and good) argument for different rules for reservations for journeys of over a certain time or distance - back to the old "what's the Cross Country franchise for" discussion. As ever, two different rule sets would make for interesting boundary oddities.

A little late to this thread but here goes anyway:

From the National Rail Conditions of Travel
3.3. Unless you have made a reservation please note that your Ticket does not automatically entitle you to a seat...

which I interpret to mean that obtaining a reservation does entitle me to occupy the seat that I have reserved unless the CIS / Train Manager specifically announces that the reservation system on the service in question has been suspended. In the absence of such an announcement I will continue to regard the lack of paper and/or electronic seat reservations as irrelevant, and, if the train is very busy, will politely ask any passenger occupying 'my' seat to move. I have only ever had one refusal, on a Cross Country service, and since the Train Manager declined to do their job properly I was forced to claim the appropriate compensation.

The expectation I have of all businesses with which I deal is that any customer service process specified in the 'T&Cs' is implemented and managed properly. Otherwise the exercise is completely pointless.

If only someone could develop some some of global, let's call it, 'positioning system' that would allow a train to in a sense 'know where it is'; the reservation system would then be able to indicate whether the seats were reserved for the current stretch of the journey and remove the reservations once their endpoint was passed. I know that this is the stuff of science fiction, and any such system would no doubt be prohibitively expensive, but we can dream...

Oddly .. I had a similar dream to the extent it's felt like reality from time to time  ;D ;D

The problem is not so much pantomime reservations ("it's behind you") which can be deal with in your way, but ones ahead.  I get on a Cross Country train at Bristol / last minute change of plans (e.g. my connection missed to the train I was supposed to be on) and I see a seat reserved from Dunbar to Dundee.   Can I use it from Bristol to Newcastle?  From Bristol to Edinburgh?   

I wonder how much of the IEP specification was derived from dreams? The relevant snippets say:

I gather the current issues are to do with the data uploading process; the on-board software rejects a whole train's data if some parts don't match its expected format. In other words, it has so far been beyond the wit of GWR and Hitachi to make this - not exactly unprecedented - process work.

Or maybe it's their suppliers? I don't know who does their reservation software (if it's not in-house), but the IEP on-board system was supplied by Televic Rail. They show the project as "2013-2017", but presumably continue to support it. Televic is Belgian (at least its HQ is), with a rather anonymous Rail UK presence - in a rent-by-the-room Regus building at Manchester Airport.

(Random thought: do such Regus offices have reservation displays outide each office or above each workstation?)

Virgin West Coast have had the electronic reservations system for many years now. And even on the 50-70% of journeys where it is functioning, they haven't been able to present a reliable system, so I'm not holding my breath for GWR to crack it.

As I see it, it means you are entitled to compensation under 30.1 (If the train you intended to use is cancelled, delayed, or your reservation will not be honoured, and you decide not to travel, you may return the unused Ticket to the original retailer or Train Company from whom it was purchased, where you will be given a full refund with no administration fee …)

If there are no reservations marked, then de facto the reservation hasn't been honoured. I believe GWR gives some kind of compensation beyond NRCOT to people with reservations who don't get any seat but do travel; never happened to me so I don't know what it is but it is referred to frequently by the twitter crew.

Increasingly the fact that there are no marked reservations is given on the platform train information.

Hi All,

From the new Passenger's Charter of Transport For Wales Railways.

Compensation for seat reservations not being honoured
Seat reservations are available on many of our longer-distance services, free of charge. If, for any reason, we cannot honour your seat reservation please speak to the Conductor onboard as they will try to find you another seat on the train. If this is not possible and you have to stand for more than 15 minutes of the journey, please ask the Conductor to endorse your ticket.
You may send your endorsed ticket and details of your journey to our Customer Relations department as we will compensate you to the value of 5% of a single ticket or relevant portion of a return ticket for every 15 minutes that you have stand, up to a maximum of the total cost of your journey ticket. You will also need to tell us how you would like us to pay your compensation. Please see the section “How will my compensation be paid?” for the options available. The above does not affect any legal rights or remedies you would otherwise have under the Consumer Rights
Act 2015.

If it's one ofd the few trains routed that way, yes.


But ios of zero help to those travelling beyond the next reservation!

For example, a train might be reserved from Bristol to Chippenham & from Swindon to LOndon. On a paper reservation ticket, both reservations can be easily seen so someone boarding at Bath for London & finding no seats available will know that the seat they are looking at is reserved again from Swindon & it's really worth taking it at Chippenham.

On an electronic reservation, it only gives you the current reservation, so if it were empty at Bath you'd be thinking that the passenger hadn't turned up & it was free. It wouldn't be until Chippenham that the next reservation would show as reserved from Swindon & you could easily get thrown out for the last hour of your journey. Paper reservations are better on long journeys were one seat might be reserved multiple times!

If reserved for part of the journey, the IET system lists the current (or available until ‘x’) and next reservations alongside the three colour status.

And if there are three (or more? perfectly possible on a PNZ-PAD journey)....

Since the IET shows the current and next reservation you would see (in your example) that the next reservation was from Swindon and find a different seat.

I wonder when someone will have a lightbulb moment that the railway is giving away money.

- You ticket allows travel between A and B (standing or seated)
- You can book a free seat from A - B so giving the railway £0 extra a seat
- Your free reservation is not honoured therefore you can claim compensation on something that cost you nothing

So overall, a net loss to the railway.

An update from me. Yesterday, Wednesday, I was able to reserve a seat on the Saturday 18.03 Paddington but not yet the 08.30 Newton Abbot Paddington. I'll try again tomorrow that one.

I wonder if it is because they don't know if I is a 9 car 802, two 5 car 802's or just one 5 car 802

I know several train managers who work West of England services who cannot wait for the demise of the HSTs.  Day after day they work HST services where the reservations have been sold based on an IET running on the day. 

“I’ll miss the trains but not the hassle” as one told me. 

Had a hassle today with this and ended up being touted as the bad guy. I have broad shoulders but refuse to be the focus of blame just because I am the first real person in a chain of dissapointment caused by the failure - yet again - of an IEP reservation system.

1630 PAD-TAU a busy service and no reservations illuminated or cards emplaced. Sat myself down. Inevitable, 5 minutes later "this is may reserved seat" - me "sorry, all seat reservations on this service are cancelled, please find anywhere to sit". 2 minute late my displaced passenger is told "sorry this is my reserved seat", he told by displaced "sorry, he's sitting in my reserved seat but the system it is all broken", then third person comes [you've guessed] to second deplacee "sorry this is my reserved seat!".

"it's all that guy's fault!", declares fourth man from across the corridor pointing at me for not moving (he also had a reservation). Hang on, I didn't break the reservation system - I have a ticket - and I have no way of knowing what seat might not be reserved until... - I have no seat!

No one was a disabled person, absolutely requiring a seat; everyone got a seat - just not the ones they wanted/expected.

Did I feel awkward? Yes. But I wasn't at fault, and GWR's constant reservations failures shouldn't negatively affect me either - after all, I have a contract with them too.

A most unpleasant journey - one of many, 5 days a week, 40 weeks of the year.

They certainly do and it was very easy to claim without having to go through the hassle of getting a ticket endorsed or other hurdles.

Last year I put in a couple of long-term reservations on services where they were available even though the stock had been downgraded to Turbo operation. I sent an email claiming compensation and got a very generous cheque in return without any quibble!