LNER - last minute reservations on MK4 sets

[Bletchleyite]

Is this the accepted method of travel in Poland though? i.e. do passengers not have the same expectation of 'turn up and go' as those in the UK?

Most people in the UK in 2025 don't have an expectation of "turn up and go" for long distance travel in the UK. It is generally seen as too expensive. The edge case here is people making local journeys on long distance trains, something you get much less in Poland as they go more for the Germanic model of different trains for different purposes, indeed the local operators are entirely separate from PKP Intercity.

I don't know how people see it in Poland though. I suspect booking in advance is more of an expectation. It seems mostly the Germanic countries (of which the UK sort of is one, in railway operation terms, at least traditionally but less so now) that favour turn up and go; most of the rest of the world favours an advance booking model of some kind.

 

[Aaron_TTL]

Poland does. The default is to reserve, and reservations aren't marked, but aside from the Pendolino services there is no penalty for not doing so bar a game of musical chairs.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Oct 2025 ==



How can't you? You can reserve and choose a seat on the app.

I have experience of this system on a LNER Azuma just 3 days ago, it had assigned me a seat at a table, and since i was traveling alone I wanted to switch out to a normal seat, the map showed lots available but every time I tried switch it says there was a technical issue and I'd not be able. And that was me trying 3 days before, 2 days before, the night before.. on the day. It just would not work.

What I ended up doing was sitting in a green available seat by myself, but then surely my seat at the table would show as reserved, thus someone else may not have sat there when they could have - luckily the train was quiet. The system is absolutely not fit for purpose.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I have experience of this system on a LNER Azuma just 3 days ago, it had assigned me a seat at a table, and since i was traveling alone I wanted to switch out to a normal seat, the map showed lots available but every time I tried switch it says there was a technical issue and I'd not be able. And that was me trying 3 days before, 2 days before, the night before.. on the day. It just would not work.

There is a problem with all of these seat selectors based on how they interface with the reservations system. The way they work is to pull a new ticket in the same quota for the selected seat, then to return the old one back to the system once it has done so (if not done that way there's a risk there wouldn't be one). Thus there needs to be an available ticket in the same quota the ticket was purchased for for a change to work, if you bought the last ticket in an Advance tier it won't, nor will it if you try to change closer to departure and that quota has since sold out.

Fortunately for LNER there is a workaround - just book another seat as if you had a walk up ticket and enter a random 5 digit number as the ticket number.

I believe this is supposed to be fixed in the sense that the reservation system can now do a seat change without effectively issuing a new ticket, at least I'm fairly sure I read that here not so long ago, but I don't think any TOC's software (nor indeed Trainsplit) can interface with that yet?

 

[AdamWW]

Poland does. The default is to reserve, and reservations aren't marked, but aside from the

But what they don't do (or Romania to pick another example) is specifically mark a seat as unreserved then change it en-route.

 

[Bletchleyite]

But what they don't do (or Romania to pick another example) is specifically mark a seat as unreserved then change it en-route.

No, they just don't mark the reservations at all. Which is a bit more like the LNER 80x "may be reserved" orange status.

I do think reserving seats marked Available from under people is silly. The ones that can be reserved en route should be marked as such.

 

[AdamWW]

I don't know how people see it in Poland though. I suspect booking in advance is more of an expectation. It seems mostly the Germanic countries (of which the UK sort of is one, in railway operation terms, at least traditionally but less so now) that favour turn up and go; most of the rest of the world favours an advance booking model of some kind.

Maybe I'm misremembering but I didn't think Poland offers large discounts for those who book ahead.

I'd still call a system turn up and go if you need to buy a ticket for a specific train and sit in the right seat so long as you can do it just before travel at a reasonable price. That's certainly how I used Polish intercity trains last summer.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Maybe I'm misremembering but I didn't think Poland offers large discounts for those who book ahead.

It doesn't, no.

I'd still call a system turn up and go if you need to buy a ticket for a specific train and sit in the right seat so long as you can do it just before travel at a reasonable price. That's certainly how I used Polish intercity trains last summer.

In that sense TGV and the Italian high speed services are probably turn up and go too, as long as there is an available seat, as fares generally don't go that high (except "Eurostar Red" which is as bad as the blue version and makes LNER look cheap). Fares policy is slightly separate from the issue of compulsory reservations; you can have compulsory reservations and flat fares or you can have optional reservations but discounts for booking in advance or dynamic pricing - or you can have both!

 

[AdamWW]

No, they just don't mark the reservations at all. Which is a bit more like the LNER 80x "may be reserved" orange status.

A bit more like, I suppose, but the big difference of course is that every ticket is sold for a particular train and with a seat reservation.

 

[Bletchleyite]

A bit more like, I suppose, but the big difference of course is that every ticket is sold for a particular train and with a seat reservation.

Indeed. It's the step just below it actually being compulsory. I guess very similar to LNER and Avanti whose tickets are mostly only sold with a reservation against a specific train now, unless bought from a TVM without planner capability. You just don't always have to stick to that train. It's notable now I find how quiet the three unreserved coaches are on 11 car Pendolinos compared to the reserved ones, though making those reserved risks creating issues when a 9 car inevitably substitutes for an 11.

 

[OscarH]

There is a problem with all of these seat selectors based on how they interface with the reservations system. The way they work is to pull a new ticket in the same quota for the selected seat, then to return the old one back to the system once it has done so (if not done that way there's a risk there wouldn't be one). Thus there needs to be an available ticket in the same quota the ticket was purchased for for a change to work, if you bought the last ticket in an Advance tier it won't, nor will it if you try to change closer to departure and that quota has since sold out

This isn't necessarily the case anymore for people who have migrated to a new system - I think this includes LNER. However the new systems way around this still has rather severe limitations in other ways (about which seats can be changed to) because nobody properly thinks through the implications of their actions

 

[sheff1]

How can't you? You can reserve and choose a seat on the app.

I gave an explanation in post #9 and aarospence has confirmed the issue in post #62.

And what proportion of seats are actually reservable? Is it most of the train?

As I said, it is the majority. How "the majority" equates or not to "most" is subjective and I have had no need to work out the actual percentage, but closer to 100% than 50%..

 

[185143]

Poland does. The default is to reserve, and reservations aren't marked, but aside from the Pendolino services there is no penalty for not doing so bar a game of musical chairs.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Oct 2025 ==



How can't you? You can reserve and choose a seat on the app.

Yes. I've just spent the weekend in Poland and the musical chairs got to be a right pain in the arse.

The default being reserve, sure, but PKP will happily continue selling tickets after all the reservations have gone, knowing full well there's no seats left.

It was such a relief to get into The Netherlands and have no reservations at all on NS. I'd scrap reservations entirely if I had my way. Why should someone travelling on a several hour journey have to move seats multiple times to let people sit down doing shorter journeys, it's not fair. First come first served in my opinion

 

[AF91]

In my opinion the ability to reserve seats on a train should be frozen 15 minutes before the departure time at origin. That would allow the current selection of available seats to be available to use for the whole journey without risk of being turfed out.

I also think thrle reservations system should try to make efficient use of seats by trying to refill recently vacated booked seats with another reservation (eg a booking from Kings Cross to York immediately replaced by a booking from York to Newcastle). It would really help with freeing up as many unreserved seats as possible for greater flexibilty.

 

[AdamWW]

The default being reserve, sure, but PKP will happily continue selling tickets after all the reservations have gone, knowing full well there's no seats left.

I'd much, much, rather be given the option of buying a ticket knowing I might have to stand than to be told sorry - train full, not allowed on as in some countries.

Last year I ended up on a PKP train without a reservation because I missed a connection (or rather my through train was cancelled en-route in a tangle of overhead wires that were no longer as overhead as they should have been).

They added extra coaches to the connecting train giving me somewhere to sit without a risk of being in a reserved seat.

 

[H F Stephens]

You would be more convincing if you clarified what test(s) you undertook that give you the ability to claim to have proved the point.

I am not at all sure that I am attempting to 'convince' anyone here; I am not seeking subjective agreement to some kind of political point - this is objective reporting of an actual result.

In any event, mostly for japes, I repeated the test on a different LNER service yesterday, making another 'last-minute' reservation.

Entirely consistently, the reservation did not update or show on board upon departure from the station from which the reservation had been issued.

 

[35B]

I am not at all sure that I am attempting to 'convince' anyone here; I am not seeking subjective agreement to some kind of political point - this is objective reporting of an actual result.

In any event, mostly for japes, I repeated the test on a different LNER service yesterday, making another 'last-minute' reservation.

Entirely consistently, the reservation did not update or show on board upon departure from the station from which the reservation had been issued.

At the risk of repeating myself, objective reporting of an actual result claimed to be a wider finding than the test appears to support.

However, I do now follow the outcome of the test. If that is representative (always the issue with sampling exercises), and accepting the issue that LNER only claim to provide the updates shortly before each station call, it would appear to prove that a seat booking protects the occupant if they book themselves into the seat that they have occupied. I also note that so doing relies on a not altogether friendly user journey to get to the seat picker.

 

[Blaine]

What happened to the seat occupancy tech that was supposedly going to be present on the Pendos? It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to connect that up to RARS and prevent reservations being made on seats people are sitting in.

Didn't LNER put those gadgets above each seat on the 225s? They looked like they had an infrared window above each seat, which would mean they could prevent occupied seats becoming reserved, and opening-up unused reservations after departure.