Great Western Coffee Shop

Hello, I sometimes travel to Redruth from Paddington to visit my father. I always book 1st Class advance tickets in the 1st Class quiet carriage. However, now I cannot book the quiet carriage , no matter what I try. I need help.

Whenever I try to book a ticket, it accepts my request but then informs me it could not book a seat in the quiet carriage and offers me a seat in another carriage. This has never happened before. I have tried about 20 different dates in June and each time it says I cannot book a seat in the quiet carriage.

Does anyone have any advice? There is no way the carriage can be booked up on 20 different occasions.

Benjamin

Call Customer Services & do it that way?

FGW are converting 1st class seats to Standard & I suspect that 1st Class quiet coach has become 'flexible' while these conversions are being carried out. Ring & Check.

Perhaps there won't be a quiet carriage once they are down to 1.5 first class carriages per train?  Once a couple of trains are converted they'll have to treat them all the same for booking purposes won't they?

Paul

Exactly - hence I suggested a call to find out.

Welcome to the forum BoRedruth!  :)

There does also appear to be some issues with the booking engine. If you request the Quiet Coach you are instead offered a seat in Coach L!

The changes to availability and this new Coach L designation appear to be after the timetable change in mid-May.

Thank you for all your quick replies. I have tried Customer Services but the language barrier meant I was pushed through three different teams, each of whom did not really understand my request, even though it was pretty simple. I tried the online chat but they referred me back to Customer Services. At this point of utter frustration I found your forum.

I did not know 1st class carriages were being redesignated.  There are about five on the train I take. One person has suggested I buy my tickets for the First Class L carriage, and then move to the quiet carriage once I am on the train, if that carriage exists.

In your experience, what would be your advice?

Benjamin

Wow, what train do you use that has 5 1st class carriages?


First Great Western's HSTs have at most 2.5 carriages of 1st class seats, some 2 carriages. But this is being changed so that eventually all HSTs will have 1.5 carriages of 1st class seats.

Even Virgin's Pedonlino trains only have 4 1st class carriages (and on one of those the driver's cab and kitchen take up 2/3rds of the carriage).

Ok, I will go for 2.5/3.5. It is the Cornish Riveria train. You walk pass the buffet and there is half a carriage, then my Carriage which is the quiet carriage. I am sure there are two further carriages, I am sure I have had to use their facilities. Of course, I could be wrong.

I have nothing to add in terms of information. But I lived in Redruth for a few months, working in South Crofty, so thought I would add my welcome to the Coffee Shop to bignosemac's.

Welcome to the forum. Many of the posters on here work in the rail industry, and are right in saying that there are 2.5 1st carriages on the Cornish Riviera train - and soon to become 1.5, although these will be refurbished.

HSTs west of London can only have a maximum of eight coaches: 5 first class (A-E) the buffet/1st (F) and two 1st class in that order (G-H) If there was ever an extra 1st class carriage beyond H for operational reasons then it would almost certainly have been declassified to Standard, as Standard is packed on busy trains.

Small typo

Fairly standard, at first sight.

Hello, thank you for the information. Hopefully in the future 1st class will not be too busy.

Further to my original post, at the top of this chain: do you think I should just go ahead and book my 1st Class ticket, and just see if a Quiet Coach is available? I am booking for early June and I am keen to grab advance tickets before they sell out.

I would book it. Very few train managers would insist that you sit in the defined seat, particularly if you explained why you wanted to sit in the quiet coach. You have an obligation to travel on the given train, and you get a seat reservation thrown in is how I see it.

Hi John, noted - I will book my ticket tomorrow.

As far as I know, it's only Virgin that insists you occupy your reserved seat on Advance tickets

Traveled on Advance tickets on Virgin many times and have never had a problem in not occupying the seat reserved. It really is high time other IC TOCs adopt the east coast solution of being able to choose your seat. The technology is there and works well.

XC already do.

Re Virgin, I've been asked to occupy my reserved seat many times when train is busy.

As I see it the standard T&C do explicitly require you to sit in your reserved seat with Advance fares.  So even if a particular TOC doesn't routinely enforce this requirement now, it is perhaps safe to say that they would if it ever gets to the stage of solving an argument if capacity was tight.

I'd expect this to become more likely once the First class capacity is generally reduced.

I expect that too. The reason why I would like FGW to introduce choose your seat so I can select an individual seat when travelling on my own or 2 seats facing forward/back when travelling with someone now there will be less first class seating.

East Coast do insist on it sometimes too, particularly if you are using a 'Print at Home' ticket.

Hi Folks

RE Quiet Carriage: From June (7th??) onwards, 1st Class are being re-lettered from G+H to K+L. The reason why you cannot get a Quiet coach reservation is because there will no longer be a Quiet coach in 1st class as I understand it.

Coach K will be a split coach with 1st class seating and either a buffet on low density HSTs or standard class seating (with separating door) with the buffet in coach F on high density sets. I think.

Coach L will be purely a 1st class coach with a disabled space. (Similar to current coach G only without its quietness!)

All 1st class coaches will be refurbished with new seats ect

Hope that helps! :)

Presumably otherwise one could dishonestly print or copy more than one ticket, with the holders of the copies sitting anywhere.

One of the T&Cs for 'Print@Home' is that the tickets are only valid when accompanied by the correct identification selected whilst making the booking. That's either photographic ID or the payment card used to make the purchase, the last four numbers of which, along with the cardholders name, are recorded on the 'Print@Home' ticket.

This accompanying ID should be checked (and in my experience, is) by the Train Manager/Conductor.