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"Direction of travel" on Split Ticketing "choose your seat"?

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Howardh

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Juts been playing around trying to get a ticket for Tuesday week Manchester - London, and great, splitting Euston/Milton Keynes/Stoke saves a tenner.

So went to choose your seat and I want to go forwards.
Coach A shows, as you look, direction of travel from R to L
Coach B shows from L to R
C void (no seats available)
Coach D shows L to R
Coach E has no direction at all!

Is the first coach, A, correct as standard seats are at the north end of the train (going northbound) or are the others correct as the diagram has been "flipped" or something - noting the position of seat 01??

Attachments showing seating plan

Opera Snapshot_2020-01-28_213519_seatselector.trainsplit.com.png Opera Snapshot_2020-01-28_213556_seatselector.trainsplit.com.png

Also, of your journey is split three times so has three separate fares, what happens r/e delay repay if you arrive 31 mins late as the first two parts may have been perfectly on time? I reckon you are only entitled to repay for the final leg?
 
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Hadders

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Also, of your journey is split three times so has three separate fares, what happens r/e delay repay if you arrive 31 mins late as the first two parts may have been perfectly on time? I reckon you are only entitled to repay for the final leg?

Delay Repay applies if your journey is delayed. You may use a combination of two or more tickets to make a journey.

You will be compensated for the full journey although some train companies like to pretend this isn't the case.
 

Bletchleyite

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I reckon that's wrong unless there's an odd planned reverse formation. From Manchester Coach A Seat 45 (the best seat in Standard - extra legroom, window aligned, subdued lighting, nobody but staff walking past and a nice big floor level bag space opposite) is right at the back and faces forwards.

FWIW I very much recommend this seat unless I'm on the train in which case it is mine :)
 

Howardh

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I reckon that's wrong unless there's an odd planned reverse formation. From Manchester Coach A Seat 45 (the best seat in Standard - extra legroom, window aligned, subdued lighting, nobody but staff walking past and a nice big floor level bag space opposite) is right at the back and faces forwards.

FWIW I very much recommend this seat unless I'm on the train in which case it is mine :)
Think I was on a similar seat but on a more central coach going towards London - certainly had more legroom than the others (probably a couple of inches) and it felt more like a first-class seat! In fact probably better as I can't recall any window-adjacent lumpy armrests!
Anyhao, what's a "planned reverse formation"? Is the coach simply turned around for whatever reason and the direction of travel on the plan accommodates this?
 

adrock1976

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What's it called? It's called Cumbernauld
Think I was on a similar seat but on a more central coach going towards London - certainly had more legroom than the others (probably a couple of inches) and it felt more like a first-class seat! In fact probably better as I can't recall any window-adjacent lumpy armrests!
Anyhao, what's a "planned reverse formation"? Is the coach simply turned around for whatever reason and the direction of travel on the plan accommodates this?

The only way possible for the train to be in reverse formation (i.e. Standard Class at the London end of the train) is if the train has entered or left Birmingham New Street via Aston, leaving Polmadie Depot to go to Edinburgh to start a London Euston via Birmingham service, or a Preston bound diversion via Liverpool Lime Street.

To get the set in its normal formation with First Class at the London end of the train, it can run into or from Birmingham New Street via Aston. Also, if it ends the day at Edinburgh and goes to Polmadie, if it is then used on a Glasgow Central - London (via either Birmingham or the ex Trent Valley Railway) First Class would be at the London end.

Hope this makes sense.
 

Howardh

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The only way possible for the train to be in reverse formation (i.e. Standard Class at the London end of the train) is if the train has entered or left Birmingham New Street via Aston, leaving Polmadie Depot to go to Edinburgh to start a London Euston via Birmingham service, or a Preston bound diversion via Liverpool Lime Street.

To get the set in its normal formation with First Class at the London end of the train, it can run into or from Birmingham New Street via Aston. Also, if it ends the day at Edinburgh and goes to Polmadie, if it is then used on a Glasgow Central - London (via either Birmingham or the ex Trent Valley Railway) First Class would be at the London end.

Hope this makes sense.
It does, but I meant can an individual coach be "turned round" - not during the journey but as part of the prep, ie all coaches have seat 1 to the left but one coach has it to the right?
 

Bletchleyite

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It does, but I meant can an individual coach be "turned round" - not during the journey but as part of the prep, ie all coaches have seat 1 to the left but one coach has it to the right?

No, you can't turn round a Pendolino coach, only the whole train.

I'm not aware of any rule as to which side seat 1 is on though!
 

Howardh

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Not that I think it's likely but couldn't an individual coach be separated and turned in a depot?
That's what I'm getting at; not one actually in service?

So it ends up like this;
<< A 1 - 59.......B 1 - 59.....C 59 - 1.....D 1 - 59....E 1 - 59.....F 1 - 59 >>

So "C" is the coach that's been "turned round" at the depot?

I've no idea why they would want to do that, but is it possible and could it explain the weird seating plan in my OP?
 

Howardh

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I'm not aware of any rule as to which side seat 1 is on though!
I don't know which is "up" or "down" - from here I go "down" to London but apparently that's "up"...! But as a geographer I feel seat 1 should be the most northerly seat on a coach. Apart from East - West trains, naturally!!!
 

Bletchleyite

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Not that I think it's likely but couldn't an individual coach be separated and turned in a depot?

I've no idea if it technically could but it is not done. All Pendolino coaches are the same way round.

The only explanation I can think of is a bug in Trainsplit's seat selector, which is relatively new so that would be understandable.
 

Howardh

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The only explanation I can think of is a bug in Trainsplit's seat selector, which is relatively new so that would be understandable.
Yes, so it's a gamble as to your actual direction of travel, so I might as well book with Avanti and hope for the best (unless there's a price advantage with ST of course!)!
 

Bletchleyite

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Yes, so it's a gamble as to your actual direction of travel, so I might as well book with Avanti and hope for the best (unless there's a price advantage with ST of course!)!

Not really. If you want to be reasonably sure which way round it actually is, check a PDF seating plan (note that the coach F layout is not the same between a 9 and 11-car set) with 1st at the south end and pick accordingly.
 

Howardh

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Not really. If you want to be reasonably sure which way round it actually is, check a PDF seating plan (note that the coach F layout is not the same between a 9 and 11-car set) with 1st at the south end and pick accordingly.
That's a good point. Think these are available on Avanti's site as they were with Virgin? Thanks!!
EDIT - yes it is and I've just printed off page 3.
 

Llanigraham

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Yes, so it's a gamble as to your actual direction of travel, so I might as well book with Avanti and hope for the best (unless there's a price advantage with ST of course!)!

Get's worse if your train reverses, such as at Shrewsbury, and you've booked "facing" from Aber to New St.
 

Howardh

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Get's worse if your train reverses, such as at Shrewsbury, and you've booked "facing" from Aber to New St.
I intend to do Middlesborough to Whitby around Easter, reverses about half way! No need for a reserved seat tho!
 

SickyNicky

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Actually reversing is a real challenge and makes it nigh on impossible to know which way the round the carriage will be. In the past, a seat number would typically cover both forward and backwards seats, but hardly ever now

In general, the maps come from the TOCs, so we have to use them. If there are mistakes, I can feed them up the chain.

We were thinking about using crowd-sourcing to allow people to "tag" good and bad seats. What do you think?
 

Bletchleyite

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We were thinking about using crowd-sourcing to allow people to "tag" good and bad seats. What do you think?

What would be really, really, really useful would be if the maps could show the actual window positions. Obviously that would take a fair bit of travelling round to see! Though a Seatguru style thing is an interesting option, though it might result in coach A seat 45 not being mine quite as often! :D
 

SickyNicky

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What would be really, really, really useful would be if the maps could show the actual window positions. Obviously that would take a fair bit of travelling round to see! Though a Seatguru style thing is an interesting option, though it might result in coach A seat 45 not being mine quite as often! :D
We don't have that data. Crowd-sourcing would seem to be a way to get it, though.
 

Bletchleyite

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We don't have that data. Crowd-sourcing would seem to be a way to get it, though.

Indeed, at least to the extent of which seats have a view and which don't. That said, you can get that (except for 9-car Coach F) from the original VT Pendolino and Voyager seating plans which are available online if you search for it.
 

Howardh

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Actually reversing is a real challenge and makes it nigh on impossible to know which way the round the carriage will be. In the past, a seat number would typically cover both forward and backwards seats, but hardly ever now

In general, the maps come from the TOCs, so we have to use them. If there are mistakes, I can feed them up the chain.

We were thinking about using crowd-sourcing to allow people to "tag" good and bad seats. What do you think?
Interesting, and thanks for replying. Good and bad seats are subjective, eg a non window seat could be quiet and peaceful if you want to bury yourself in a book, tunes, laptop or a decent red. And a window seat could be next to a rattling luggage shelf or, worse, right under the thousand-decibal aircon unit!
 

paddington

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On trains that reverse during their journey I usually change seat to another forward facing one at every reversal point. It would be nice if there was a way to reserve seats like this, although I understand that the direction of the train can't be guaranteed anyway
 

yorkie

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The second question has been asked and answered many times recently, in fact Yorkie drew attention to a staff brief only a short while ago:
https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...-of-number-of-tickets-held-mythbuster.198338/
Indeed.

The delay repay claim is for the whole journey; this shas always been the case but was clarified earlier this month. If anyone has not yet followed that link, I recommend you do, as the clarification will avoid potential arguements in future (or at least settle them at an early stage in the customers favour).

If you use paper tickets, take a photo of all the tickets together. Some train companies impose a file size limit so you may need to crop/resize your image to fit within those limits.

I prefer e-tickets for this purpose; you will get one single PDF file with all the e-tickets (one page for each ticket) and so you can attach that file to the Delay Repay form.

When it asks for the cost of the ticket, type the full value of all tickets.
 

Bletchleyite

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On trains that reverse during their journey I usually change seat to another forward facing one at every reversal point. It would be nice if there was a way to reserve seats like this, although I understand that the direction of the train can't be guaranteed anyway

If you don't mind the effort of doing it as separate transactions, and possibly paying a little more (or less), you could split tickets manually to achieve this.
 
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