Cambrian Line observations

[WAB]

Finally, on 158s, those seat-back pieces of paper are also completely inaccessible for anyone with a visual impairment, unlike the much better displays and LED lights on things like 800s. Personally I think they should have been banned under equality legislation long ago!

Reservation labels have died a bit of a death anyway. Most TOCs which still use them don't consistently place them rendering them worthless.

 

[Belperpete]

And it is only 9 miles and 7 minutes from Caersws to Newtown!

I've been using the Cambrian for over 20 years and the only times I haven't been able to find a seat on the UP trains have been typically on a Saturday when the Motorbike Show and the Model Railway Show were on at the NEC. At other times I have never had to stand. On the DOWN the problem is the number of passengers who join at New St to go to Wolverhampton, Telford or Shrewsbury because the TfW service is quicker than the West Mids service. I have always been of the opinion that at rush hour times the TfW service should drop the Telford stop. It is why if I can I join the train at those times at International.

And as I said the problem of having reservations is the reversal at Shrewsbury. I have heard many people complain they have to change seats because they only like travelling forwards or backwards, and that would be made worse by this proposal.

As someone who has been using the Cambrian for getting on for 50 years, I fully agree.

It is not uncommon for the Telford stop to be omitted in cases of overcrowding. On my last trip, where we ended up with 2 cars beyond Shrewsbury, it was announced it would no longer call at Wellington, Telford or Wolverhampton! So I transferred to the near-empty WMT service 10 minutes later, and travelled in comfort. I think that the great majority of passengers at Wellington and Telford are local commuters, the number travelling to Cambrian line stations must be negligible.

And I agree that seat reservations on the Cambrian were a complete nightmare, both for those with reservations and those without. You would be issued with a reservation for say 15 Facing, only to find that it was a backward seat. So people with 15F and 15B would argue about who was in the right seat. People with a reservation would take the label out of the seat to read it, not put it back. Which meant that the subsequent reservation for later in the journey would be lost. People would decide that they didn't want to sit in their reserved seat, say sharing a table with strangers when there were empty bays elsewhere, meaning that they were effectively using two seats. So people would regularly sit in unoccupied reserved seats, not realising that the seat had a second and sometimes even a third reservation on it. Not to mention all the problems people had actually finding their reserved seats, even without set swaps and reverse formation running. And all the tourists who are not regular train travellers and don't even think to check that the seat they are sitting in might be reserved. Things have been SO much better since they dropped the reservations.

Some of these issues would go away with electronic displays. But of course they come with a new set of problems. And this was all in the days when reserving a seat was relatively rare. God knows what it would be like now when just about every on line ticket automatically comes with a reservation, no matter how short the journey. Which could well lead to journey planners refusing to sell a ticket for someone doing a long distance trip because the train is "full" of short hop passengers.

If there was some way of limiting reservations to journeys that included a Shrewsbury - Machynlleth core, then I might support it. But not if every short hop journey is going to result in a reservation.

 

[nwales58]

... the number of passengers who join at New St to go to Wolverhampton, Telford or Shrewsbury because the TfW service is quicker ...

and TfW pricing 20p below the any permitted plus advances multiplied by journey planner-based ticket buying showing a choice of 3.50, 5.80 or 5.90 and people picking the cheapest. Why is there a 3.80 advance on the 1822 today???