Reserved on service but not on seat!

Billy-no-Money

Is this London Midland? I know they do that on their Crewe-Euston and Liverpool-Birmingham services.

I think this might appear illogical because of the word 'reservation' - it makes more sense if you think of it as a 'restriction'.

It doesn't guarantee you a place on that train - it means you can ONLY use that train. Get on a different one and you can expect to have to pay full fare. It's intended to keep the people with discount tickets off the busy services (in other words, encourage people to not use the busy services by offering cheap restricted tickets).

In the event that services are so busy you can't get on - this is unlikely unless there's disruption, in which case the operator isn't likely to care which train you get on.

(I actually prefer this system when I'm travelling alone - I often use Virgin from Preston to Birmingham, and I hate searching out my seat, sometimes having to ask someone to vacate it, especially when it turns out all the reservations are in one or two coaches, while the rest of the train has plenty of space.)

yorkie2

Billy-no-Money wrote: »

Get on a different one and you can expect to have to pay full fare...

The rules changed, it's no longer the full fare. It's now the appropriate fare (with discounts, where the original fare was discounted).

I believe this is because the DfT were concerned that the Train Companies were unfairly penalising passengers.

In some cases that can potentially be a huge difference, e.g. Manchester - London down from £154 to £50.35 for a Railcard holder.

cookie365

This is a Southern service on the Brighton mainline, so no seat reservations are ever possible, and other journeys on the same route always say 'none' for the reservation.

Don't worry, I don't really care why it says that, was just vaguely curious

cookie365

Well, I got a mandatory seat reservation ticket for that leg when I collected the tickets, as well as the seat reservation for the substantive leg of the journey, which suggests that I have to get that particular service to make the ticket valid, and can't get an earlier one to give me more time to make the connection.

wealdroam

cookie365 wrote: »

Well, I got a mandatory seat reservation ticket for that leg when I collected the tickets, as well as the seat reservation for the substantive leg of the journey, which suggests that I have to get that particular service to make the ticket valid, and can't get an earlier one to give me more time to make the connection.

That's right. You have to travel on the specified train.

Of course if it is physically impossible for you to get on that train because it is over full, then I would advise you to seek out a member of staff to endorse your ticket to allow you to travel on the next train.