Are our trains really that busy?

[whole diary]

[Bob_Blakey]

Just booked a DIG-OXF^» (Oxford - next trains) via RDG^▸ (Rail Delivery Group, or Reading station, depending on context) trip for 'She Who Believes She Must Be Obeyed' in early October(Out 5th, Return 8th) and there are apparently absolutely no reservable seats available on many of the Off-Peak services. The ticket is a Super Off Peak Return. I tried both FGW^▸ (First Great Western) & East Coast interwebs just in case it was a search engine issue but got the same result on two consecutive days on both sites.

Any thoughts? - I reckoned it was a little late for the returning/fresher hordes of unwashed undergraduates.

[ChrisB]

they're turbos from rdg?....

[devon_metro]

Oxford goes to uni on the 4th, might be some overspill.

[eightf48544]

Presumably you are talking about the Exeter To Reading leg there would be plenty of seats from Reading to Oxford  even on the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)).

[inspector_blakey]

Unlikely to be anything to do with Oxford University (esp as what devon_metro posted isn't actually correct ). "Full term", meaning classes, lectures etc, starts on 11 Oct (for some reason the university week always begins on a Sunday). Most colleges expect the undergrads to arrive by the Thursday before, except the freshers who will have been there a few days before that. There's no one big influx/exodus in practice, and students tend to trickle in steadily over a period of a couple of weeks. And it's not as if they all travel up from Devon either!

Definitely odd that the booking system says there supposedly no reservable seats on the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train (Inter City class 43 125 units)) between Exeter and Reading though, I really don't understand that one.