Re: thetrainline.com

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From: Smylers
Subject: Re: thetrainline.com
Date: 02:22 on 05 Feb 2005
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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