Unreserved Seating on VTWC

[Southernrover]

Hi all, I need to take a trip on the West Coast out of Euston tomorrow morning but I haven't had time to reserve a seat.
I understand that there are always a couple of unreserved carriages on the Pendolinos, could someone please tell me which ones they are on the 9 & 11 car sets.
Thanks
Rick

 

[DarloRich]

F or U on an 11 car set, F on a 9 car ( i think!)

 

[gordonthemoron]

I'm on the 19:00 from Euston to Macclesfield tomorrow, there were no reserveable seats .

Why are table seats sometimes reserved in coaches F & U?

 

[Bletchleyite]

There shouldn't be any reservations in coach U, as not every set has one and so it allows interchangeability of 9 and 11-car sets.

9 car sets now have a coach F so I guess this is reservable if necessary.

 

[D6975]

Some enterprising members of ticket office staff have clearly found a way around this. I have many times seen reservations in supposedly unreservable coaches.
It's not a new thing either, goes back many years.

 

[Southernrover]

Hmm thanks for the replies.
I'd better be quick off the mark down the ramp. Either that or use RTT to check on the platform.

 

[causton]

Some enterprising members of ticket office staff have clearly found a way around this. I have many times seen reservations in supposedly unreservable coaches.
It's not a new thing either, goes back many years.

They must have a better system than Tribute then, as each time I try it just says it has failed! Maybe it is from VT Customer Relations they have manually booked if people complain etc. I think they may open up all coaches for reservations if they are more certain it is an 11-car, if it is a "priority" working for them for example... so it could be that, or the VTWC Seat Selector maybe letting them reserve in those coaches.

 

[Mordac]

The middle car in their Super Voyagers is also unreserved.

 

[Mikey C]

On most VTWC trains, there are always lots of empty reserved seats anyway, where people (with flexible tickets) have seat reservations on more than more train, or get to their reserved seat, think it's horrible and find a better one elsewhere!

 

[Southernrover]

As a post script to this thread:
I returned on the afternoon VTWC service from Shrewsbury which is a single set as far as Birmingham New St.
No seat allocations on departure from SHR so sit where you like basically.
On arrival at Birmingham there was an announcement that the planned join of the sets would take place at Birmingham Intl due to delay on the other set.
Cue one VERY overcrowded set for the short hop.
On arrival at BHI the Train Manager announced that anyone with seat reservations in the front set could move forward.
Now cue chaos because the seat reservations hadn't downloaded to either set and the whole train ran forward without reserved seats.
Arrived 11 late at Euston just in case anyones interested.
Doh!