Campaign for Family Friendly Trains: Tips for travelling with young children

[bringbackcrouc]

Hi,

As part of our work to make trains more family friendly (https://familyfriendlytrains.com/) we're preparing a guide and top tips to make the journey easier.

If you have any top tips to make what can be quite a traumatic experience easier, please let us know and we'll include them on the website.

JC

 

[johnnychips]

I think this is a great idea, but I will leave the tips to those who have/had children!

 

[IanD]

Tip 1: My action of choice was to leave the kids at home and travel solo.

Tip 2: Get a smaller child conveyance device that CAN be folded rather than blocking the vestibule.

 

[Scott1]

Hmm, I have a few suggestions, but it's not something I have much experience of other than for other people's children. Folding pushchairs, that are easy to fold, are vital. Entertainment too, not pens or anything too noisy though, aside from annoying other passengers it'll quickly annoy you too! Children cry, but Baby Shark on a loop makes me cry!

Planning ahead, especially for long distance is helpful. Booking a table and window seat for example or being in the carriage with the baby change and accessable toilet.

I'd also recommend allowing extra time to show your children the station, explain about staying behind the yellow line, how trains work, how to identify staff to get help and particularly how to get on and off the train safely as at some stations the gap can be too big for small children to get off without help. Plus it's fun for them to be able to read the signs, find the right train etc, helps keep them entertained (and cooperative!).

Hope this is helpful.

 

[Deafdoggie]

In my general experience I found 'crowd control' much easier on a train than in a car. It's easy to go for a walk or go to the toilet whilst on the move.
Sadly, a lot of people don't see public transport as...well, public. I don't know what they expect! They appear to think everyone should be sat in silence. Preferably with their fingers on their lips. We have reserved table seats, but found people in them who refused to move. One business man said he needed the table of four to himself to work, I pointed out we had all four seats reserved, he said he wasn't going to move. I left my three children in the three empty seats with him and sat in a seat at the other end of the carriage. He soon moved! All too often seats aren't reserved though and the railway can't be relied on to help then, even though it's their fault.
On the plus side, we've had many friendly encounters with people too. We've had passengers joining in board games with us. We've had train staff trying to guess what is inside wrapped presents.
Generally it's a mixed bag though. The children are all older now and have cars, so the grumpy people who wanted silence from them have got their way now. Of course, their train fares are higher as they have put off a generation of people from travelling by train, but I guess they see that as a positive, as it's now quieter.

 

[ComUtoR]

I currently don't have any suggestions (at least not public ones) but from my experiences as a parent with two children. I don't like it whatsoever.

From your website the 'solution' posed is to have pram spaces. This is a bad idea because of the number of issues it creates, rather than solves.

1. Creates a single space for prams etc so doesn't provide space for more than one (conflict)
2. The space created is often shared with wheelchairs/bikes (conflict)

These are probably the main issues that would need to be looked at first. How do you propose to 'solve' those ?

I would also ask :

What other 'facilities' are you asking for ?
Are you asking for a retrofit of existing stock or solutions for new stock ?
What do you define as 'family friendly'
Are you aware of the difficulties and required standards involved with your list of issues ? (level boarding etc)
What specifically (other than pram spaces) makes a train unfriendly to families ?
You say you have Southeastern covered. What issues and posed solutions have you found ?

 

[30907]

Mine are long grown up but:
1. take advantage of a F+F Railcard and reserve seats for under 5s - saves arguments over occupying unreserved ones, gives them space.
2. check which toilets have a changing table just in case - we did use a vestibule on one emergency occasion!
3. unless your child is very small, buy a cheap small buggy and use it in preference to your oversized all-terrain vehicle. There is nothing wrong with letting them sleep on a train seat - they don't mind ironing boards! Or use the portable bit of a car seat.
Before you ask, we had a state-of-the-art Mothercare one (big by late 80s standards) and one of the first car seats which fitted nicely on a Mk3 table, and I realise specifications have changed and things got bigger and more complex!
4. Longer journeys with more than one child are easier with two adults (not always possible I know).
5. Ask for help when you need it - staff are usually helpful.

Now a story: with children aged 4 and 1.5 we were travelling home by car via relatives in the Paris suburbs when the fuel tank developed a leak and we had to abandon the car and come home by train, using our booked Zeebrugge-Hull tickets and coinciding with an SNCF strike. The lightweight buggy was useful (see #3).
Mercifully, we managed to get tickets (the queue at Gare du Nord was awful - I'd tried and failed to use the SNCF Minitel service - this being 1990) on the midday EC to Brussels and find a nearly empty compartment, and the other passenger was friendly. SNCF ex-TEE stock BTW.
Another: the next year we used French Motorail: arriving at Avignon Ville station about 2100 having checked in the car we found the loos closed - so we asked (see #5) and the Chef de Gare opened his office as an impromptu changing facility.

 

[pdq]

Please engage with your children during the journey. Usually, when little ones get noisy, it's because they want attention, and seeing parents apparently too busy on their phones to give that proper attention really saddens me.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Rail industry has never really been in favour of leisure travel, which family travel is really, so they aren't really going to do much about it.
There isn't enough luggage space on most trains, let alone a space for a pushchair. We once had to stash our luggage in a wheelchair space as there was nowhere else. The train manager was not happy and demanded it was moved (no wheelchair user needed the space or was booked to use it) or the train would be halted. We moved it all into the aisle, which the train manager wasn't happy with. I pointed out I was happy to put it wherever they wanted, if they could suggest somewhere. They said to then put it in the wheelchair space! I'm afraid leisure travellers are second class citizens on the railway. And those with children even lower.

 

[[.n]]

Hi,

As part of our work to make trains more family friendly (https://familyfriendlytrains.com/) we're preparing a guide and top tips to make the journey easier.

If you have any top tips to make what can be quite a traumatic experience easier, please let us know and we'll include them on the website.

JC

As someone who has travelled a lot with children, then I'm not convinced by your 4 aims

Presumably you mean only on long distance trains, as that's what the European examples seem to focus on? So if you're actually planning a 3+ hour journey, then its possible to plan for the pram/pushchair to be folded during that time.

Assuming there are bookable pram spaces - what do you do when the spaces are booked - forbid turn and and go customers?