The RANT thread (often contains fruity language)

[Kim]

Spreading human waste over rails following refurbishment of railway carriages is just unnaceptable and for whatever reason!

Except at Reading.

[Pickled Onion]

So LNER has a whizzy new electronic reservation system. Instead of the ticket on the back of the seat there's now an LCD screen and a red light.

"Reserved to Leeds"

They really didn't think that one through, did they? 

[Giraffe]

First time I went on a train that had the reservations on a display I realised the major drawback: the tickets could be seen from the door; the displays only from by the seat. In a crowded train, everyone looking for seats, walking through the carriage was difficult - and that's without looking for free seats.

[Jakob W]

The advantage for the train operators is that they don't have to send staff through the train putting in reservation tickets, and (in theory!) they can take reservations pretty much up to the time the train leaves a station. In practice, of course, it's not uncommon for the displays to be blank - presumably the reservation data hasn't made it to the train - and as noted it leads to lots of squinting at the screens to see if a seat is actually reserved.

[Cudzoziemiec]

OTOH it avoids having to bend down to read the card to find out where the reservation applies. "Reserved to Leeds" is useful to know (though it usually includes "from ... ") cos if you've passed Leeds, it's no longer reserved.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Tickets . . .

Get to my reserved seat. Person sat in it.
"Excuse me, I have this seat reserved."
"There isn't a ticket on it"
I go through rigmarole of showing my ticket with seat number on it. Experienced traveler vacates seat. On-the-way-to-benidorm traveler argues but-there-isn't-a-ticket-on-the-seat for 5 minutes.

electronic display
It's broken. We all give up.

[ian]

Does anyone actually sit in the reserved seats? I generally get a seat next to the escaped mental patient, opposite the lady filing down her nails to stubs and the bloke having the long and loud phone conversation about a paint order. In the farting carriage.

I go sit somewhere else.

[Jakob W]

Well, even on busy trains about half the reservations seem to be booked and not used, but having one at least means you should have somewhere to plonk yourself and stick headphones in to shut out the world. Though I have been known to stretch out in a vestibule in preference to the packed carriage - as long as you can pick the side's that mostly away from the platform it's often less faff.

[essexian]

I think "they" need some new reasons for delays as "they" used the same one (people on the track at Mordor Central) twice in the same week.

Oh...and please, if you have a cold/flu/general spreadable illness STAY OFF TRAINS! I now have a sore throat after yesterday's trip to the frozen north.


 

[Jaded]

I quite often don’t use the seat reserved for me. I can’t/won’t stand up on a train so I always book when I can. I prefer seats in the middle of the carriage and some train companies insist on booking from the outer ends first. Also I have to sit back to the engine and they regularly get that wrong.

[Kim]

I often eschew my reserved seat in favour of sitting within reasonable tetrising distance of my bicycle.  (On Virgin, this means the "Reserved for cyclist" seats in coach A, rather than my reserved seat at the other end of coach A.  On CrossCountry, it often means being approximately halfway between the vestibule with the exhaust pipes and the thermostat and the arctic gusts from the air-conditioning at the far end of the carriage.  The rest of the time it usually means the stinky poo seat.)

[hellymedic]

Does anyone actually sit in the reserved seats? I generally get a seat next to the escaped mental patient, opposite the lady filing down her nails to stubs and the bloke having the long and loud phone conversation about a paint order. In the farting carriage.

I go sit somewhere else.

I don't have much choice in a wheelchair as the wheelchair bays are rather limited.

My companions are more flexible. They need to be as they don't have to occupy the Pendolino PONG cloud...

[Bledlow]

Does anyone actually sit in the reserved seats? I generally get a seat next to the escaped mental patientcare in the community recipient, opposite the lady filing down her nails to stubs and the bloke having the long and loud phone conversation about a paint order. In the farting carriage.

I go sit somewhere else.

FTFY

[Pickled Onion]

OTOH it avoids having to bend down to read the card to find out where the reservation applies. "Reserved to Leeds" is useful to know (though it usually includes "from ... ") cos if you've passed Leeds, it's no longer reserved.

That's the thing, the paper ones said "from..." the electronic ones just say "Reserved to Leeds". So if you get on at Peterborough going to Newark you have no idea if it was reserved from London and the passenger hasn't turned up, or if they have reserved from Grantham and you will get kicked out when they get on.

For season ticket holders, the paper ones also had your name on, so if they moved you around it wouldn't be hard to find where to. The electronic ones are obviously better, as they're not susceptible to printer jams, nor do they take someone 15 minutes to change over, but would it really have been that hard to put the minimum necessary information on them?

[Beardy]

It wouldn’t have been hard to make sure the information was available electronicly, in fact it would have been trivial. But it would have cost more!

[Kim]

Fairly sure Virgin manage to do it properly.

[Tim Hall]

Kim's entry in the "sentences you don't hear every day" contest:

Fairly sure Virgin manage to do it properly.

[andrewc]

Kim's entry in the "sentences you don't hear every day" contest:

Fairly sure Virgin manage to do it properly.

Being fair,  I use Virgin on the West Coast Main Line from Liverpool to London every couple of months & I've had very few complaints.  I usually book into the Quiet Coach, and notice that a couple of seats are always "reserved for cyclists" even when their are none on the train.  To take advantage of these you need to go to coach A, which is a pain at Euston, as its right at the end.

[SoreTween]

Fairly sure Virgin manage to do it properly.

So do GWR on their new Hitachi jobs. Now & next reservation on two lines with from and to, e.g From Gloucester to Stroud & From Stroud to Reading plus red/green lights too.

[essexian]

Dear Neighbour

This being Stafford you may not have noticed that we have moved into the 21st Century and thus, some of us have things called "Central Heating" powered, normally, by gas. Its quite effective in keeping a house warm and does not produce clouds of smoke, like back in the old days of the 1950's.

My suggestion dear neighbour is you try gas powered central heating as the "Wood Burner" you had installed a couple a months ago SMELLS TO HIGH HEAVEN.So much so, if we open a door our house fills up with your pollution. "Oh it smells lovely" says CBH.... NO IT DOES NOT!

So, please enter the 21st Century and DITCH THE WOOD BURNER.

Regards


Ian

[Cudzoziemiec]

Fairly sure Virgin manage to do it properly.

So do GWR on their new Hitachi jobs. Now & next reservation on two lines with from and to, e.g From Gloucester to Stroud & From Stroud to Reading plus red/green lights too.

This is what I thought, hence surprised at Pickled Onion's finding it not. Clearly some franchises are crapper than others... who'd a thunk it.

(Hardly worth reserving from Gloucester to Stroud though!)

[Torslanda]

Stafford has moved into the 21st Century. - Citation required...

[Andrij]

On the 11^th day of Christmas my true love neighbours gave to me ...

More f***ing fireworks! 

[ian]

Dear Neighbour

This being Stafford you may not have noticed that we have moved into the 21st Century and thus, some of us have things called "Central Heating" powered, normally, by gas. Its quite effective in keeping a house warm and does not produce clouds of smoke, like back in the old days of the 1950's.

My suggestion dear neighbour is you try gas powered central heating as the "Wood Burner" you had installed a couple a months ago SMELLS TO HIGH HEAVEN.So much so, if we open a door our house fills up with your pollution. "Oh it smells lovely" says CBH.... NO IT DOES NOT!

So, please enter the 21st Century and DITCH THE WOOD BURNER.

Regards


Ian

Our next door neighbour has a wood stove (judging from the view down the valley they're quite common around here) and her chimney is level with our ground floor...

She's a nice lady though and she had the wood burner long before we moved in. Plus she burned all our manky decking when we ripped it up. That's how we learned about the location of the chimney.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Perhaps Essexian's neighbour is not burning wood but eg rubbish.