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Hakim Cassimally writes: > The options for seating direction are "Front", "Back", and "Airline". > None of which are directions. Front might mean "in direction of > travel", It kind-of does. It means a table seat that _was_ in the direction of travel when the train started. But if, for example, you're booking a train from Birmingham to Leeds, that train might have started in Bristol or Exeter. If it did then it might have stopped at Gloucester, in which case it will have driven forwards into Gloucester station and reversed out, and will then be travelling backwards for the rest of the journey. So your 'Front' ticket will actually be facing away from the direction of travel. But the train might have started somewhere else and be travelling forwards at the point you book it. In general you've no way of knowing -- the site doesn't even tell you where the train has been, let alone whether it's turned round somewhere along the line. For that matter the site doesn't even tell you the final destination of the train you've booked on -- which is one of the key pieces of information that will identify the train in the departures listings at the station you're trying to catch it from. > Back might mean "away from direction of travel, so you get > travel-sick, because obviously you want that", Yeah, I can understand people who aren't afflicted with travel sickness not caring which direction their seat faces, but I can't see why somebody who actually _prefer_ to face backwards. > and I'm fucked if I know what Airline means. It means a seat not at a table, which might be facing in either direction. I think that in general the train companies don't know in advance which way round their carriages will be for a particular journey, so while they can be sure that seat 22 is an airline seat they don't know whether it's forwards- or backwards-facing, even at the start of the journey. With seats at tables they can hedge their bets because (at least in some types of carriages) pairs of facing seats share a number -- that is there would be 2 seats both labelled 17, one facing backwards and one facing forwards. Therefore whichever way round the carriage is there's bound to be a seat 17 that's facing forwards. > There is no way to suggest you'd like to be on the Quiet coach or not. If you book over the phone you sometimes get asked this. You also get asked whether you want a smoking seat or not. I once responded by saying that we were booking me on a Virgin train to Edinburgh, and that Virgin trains are entirely non-smoking, so the question was pointless. The operator corrected me: I was being booked on an open-ended return, so I could phone back at a later point to make the seat reservation for the return journey; and GNER also run trains from Edinburgh, and they do have smoking carriages, so by answering the question now my non-smoking preference would be stored in the system ready for later use! For some reason that's preferable to simply asking me when booking the return journey, should indeed I bother to book, and the journey be on a train with smoking seats, but I can't work out why. (And it doesn't seem to allow for the possibility of my taking up smoking during my week in Edinburgh ...) Smylers
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