The Lemon Fool

I hate Cross Country trains with a vengeance. There might be a worse train company (Southern?) but I doubt it. But I have to take them in a few days time.

I tried to book online and it said "sold out" all day. Useless. I rang them about how that is possible and they said that you cannot use their trains without a seat reservation because of "Covid", that ever reliable excuse for the incompetent.(*) So I cannot book or buy a ticket online for this trip for this day. So, my question:

DAK what happens if I just buy a ticket on the station and board the train anyway? I am fairly sure nobody can or will physically prevent that. I am happy if there are no seats as I can stand somewhere - the trip is only about an hour. But what can the ticket inspector do if I have a valid ticket for that journey but no reservation? (If he throws me off at the next station I don't mind as that is my destination).

(*) It may be that they only allow seat bookings for 50% of the seats, or some such.

Lootman wrote:(*) It may be that they only allow seat bookings for 50% of the seats, or some such.

I believe that may well be the case, window seats only perhaps.

In the interests of the inspector or guard keeping his or her distance from the passengers, they may not go through the train checking tickets and reservations anyway.

A specialist forum for this type of question is https://www.railforums.co.uk/

If (and possibly a big if) they've got all their notices in order, you could be caught out by the railway byelaws:

19 Except with permission from an authorised person, no person shall remain in any seat, berth or any part of a train where a notice indicates that it is reserved for a specified ticket holder or holders of tickets of a specific class, except the holder of a valid ticket entitling him to be in that particular place. [if there is a notice stating that only those with reserved seats are allowed on board]

12.1 an operator may issue reasonable instructions relating to safety on any part of the railway by means of a notice on or near that part of the railway. No person shall, without good cause, disobey such notice [assuming that instructions related to Covid are "relating to safety"]

24.1 offence and level of fines: any person who breaches any of these byelaws commits an offence and, with the exception of Byelaw 17, may be liable for each such offence to a penalty not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale [a fine of up to £1000]

But of course your get-out is:
24.4: notices: no person shall be subject to any penalty for breach of any of the byelaws by disobeying a notice unless it is proved to the satisfaction of the court before whom the complaint is laid that the notice referred to in the particular byelaw was displayed

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ay-byelaws

Lootman wrote:(*) It may be that they only allow seat bookings for 50% of the seats, or some such.

I've an idea this is the case. They only sell one seat per row precisely because of "covid". So if you buy a ticket on the platform and get on the train and mill about "looking for a seat" until it moves off, I can't see there is much that will be able to do about it even if the ticket collector oops I mean "train manager" challenges you. Even then you could point out the platform ticket machine should not be selling tickets if pre booking is mandatory.

SteelCamel wrote:If (and possibly a big if) they've got all their notices in order, you could be caught out by the railway byelaws:

19 Except with permission from an authorised person, no person shall remain in any seat, berth or any part of a train where a notice indicates that it is reserved for a specified ticket holder or holders of tickets of a specific class, except the holder of a valid ticket entitling him to be in that particular place. [if there is a notice stating that only those with reserved seats are allowed on board]

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ay-byelaws

Yeah, obviously if I am in a seat that is reserved and that person shows up, then I have to move. No problem. In my experience people often do not show up and claim seats they have reserved. So if the reservation is from Oxford and you are past Oxford station, then you should be golden.

My concern was not so much about where I sit but whether I am forbidden to be on the train at all without a reservation. Seems ridiculous if there are vacant seats but "it's Covid, innit mate?".

My days of hiding out in the toilet to avoid the ticket collector are long over.

LNER (what used to be called East Coast) will not let you board unless you have a reservation and I think they sensibly police that at boarding. My local train though does not require reservations. I have only been on it once (1 hour to my nearest city) and it was very quiet with acres of space, and no conductor or ticket inspector in sight. There are ticket barriers at the station though but absolutely no supervision on board.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:LNER (what used to be called East Coast) will not let you board unless you have a reservation and I think they sensibly police that at boarding.

How do they stop people boarding without a seat reservation? I can see how they might not let you onto the station or the platform, by manually checking for a reserved seat voucher. But for all they know you might be taking a different, later or local train that does not have that requirement.

I guess it depends how the station is laid out. But what I cannot see them doing is manning every door of the train and preventing me from getting on. For a 10-coach train that would take 20 guards.

Lootman wrote:

Dod101 wrote:LNER (what used to be called East Coast) will not let you board unless you have a reservation and I think they sensibly police that at boarding.

How do they stop people boarding without a seat reservation? I can see how they might not let you onto the station or the platform, by manually checking for a reserved seat voucher. But for all they know you might be taking a different, later or local train that does not have that requirement.

I guess it depends how the station is laid out. But what I cannot see them doing is manning every door of the train and preventing me from getting on. For a 10-coach train that would take 20 guards.

I am quoting Edinburgh and I do not know the details but it is a more or less dedicated platform and my impression is that they check as passengers (or intending passengers anyway) reach the platform. Some who may have used this service recently will know better than I.

Dod

I travelled on a couple of trains recently, they will not let you board without a reservation and they will "endeavour" to ensure all bookings (not seats) are socially distanced.
In practice most people were well spaced out, but I did notice one poor chap who was surrounded by 3 strangers for part of the journey.

If they are sold out with a few days to go, you are probably SOL.

If you arrive at the station without a reservation and the train is deemed too full to board, you can get your ticket endorsed by station staff to travel on the next available service. We also advise you to use our Ten Minute reservation service to reserve a seat on the next available train.

Lanark wrote:I travelled on a couple of trains recently, they will not let you board without a reservation

Yes, but how exactly do they stop you boarding in that case?

I can see how they might not let you enter the station. But then you might already be on the station, say by having connected from another train. Once on the platform I do not see how they can prevent you from boarding - there are too many doors to police. And once on board I will take my chances since I feel sure some reserved seatholders will not show up.

As an aside on southeastern the role of guard is separate from the role of "Revenue" (as they are nicknamed). These people roam about the network doing spot-checks on tickets whilst the guards just check that no-one is hanging half out of the train before it sets off. (At bigger stations this role is taken over by the station staff.)
C.

Perhaps you need to adopt the third-world trick and cling to the roof?

If not you, with rules like that someone surely will!

Please let us know how you get on!

John

Get a really cheap deal on a Boeing 737 Max

AiY

oddly enough --- I booked a CrossCountry ticket for Friday a couple of hours ago. I noticed some journeys were limited to First Class so presumably sold out of standard/saver tickets (£185 vs £79..)
The little warning triangle against every journey states;

CrossCountry:
Please book your space before you travel. If you are making a journey with CrossCountry ,we strongly advise that you book a place on the train as availability is limited due to social distancing. If you don't book a place you may not be able to travel on your preferred service.

So make of that what you will - "strongly advise"..."may not be able to travel"
If it's busy will they check reservations?
If some reservation-less oik plonks himself down next to me , can I get him throw orf the train by the constabulary?

Lootman wrote:
DAK what happens if I just buy a ticket on the station and board the train anyway? I am fairly sure nobody can or will physically prevent that. I am happy if there are no seats as I can stand somewhere - the trip is only about an hour. But what can the ticket inspector do if I have a valid ticket for that journey but no reservation? (If he throws me off at the next station I don't mind as that is my destination).

JFDI. Act dumb and blame the website/IT/system (this increasingly works now in many situations, I find). Mock-apologise for your own stupidity/carelessness/incompetence. Tell them you going for a Covid jab you have just been called for.

redsturgeon wrote:Please let us know how you get on!

Happily. The short version is that I got away with it. Or rather that it was so easy that I didn't really feel that I had gotten away with anything.

Long version: A ticket was sold to me (machine), the barriers let me through (automatic gates) and so the station, platform and train were accessible to me. I found an unoccupied window seat and the ticket inspector cheerfully clipped my ticket. Nobody sat next to me.

I would estimate that my "sold out" train was about 60% full. This chimes with the idea expressed earlier that, due to Covid, train companies are only offering maybe 50% of their seats for sale online, and then asserting that the train is "sold out" when they reach that number. Or to put it another way, they won't let you book a seat reservation if the seat next to you is already booked to another, so they won't sell you the ticket either.

To really enforce a "seat reservations only" rule, the rail system in question would have to be somehow sealed off from the rest of the system. So such policies are effective on Eurostar and the Japanese bullet trains, for instance. The only way I can see it working on regular UK trains is perhaps the case that Dod mentioned - where the platform is dedicated to the service and has its own checkpoint. I see that in some London terminii but, this being Cross Country trains, we are talking about provincial railway stations, and there cannot be too many with that capability.

So the fact that you cannot buy your ticket online and in advance in no way means that you cannot travel on that train. Just show up and go, old school. The phrase "sold out" is misleading.

Lootman wrote:
So the fact that you cannot buy your ticket online and in advance in no way means that you cannot travel on that train. Just show up and go, old school. The phrase "sold out" is misleading.

If you aren't intending to buy the cheaper form of ticket (known confusingly as "Advance") with validity restricted to a single train, you could buy a ticket online for any train they will sell to you.