So here I am dealing with my first train ticket booking since, er, March 2020! It's for a St Neots-Leeds trip on 15 July - so well in advance of travel. No problem booking advance tickets (via trainsplit.com - but NB no splitting is involved in this trip). GA ticket machines at CBG wouldn't release the tickets (reckoned that I didn't swipe the same card as used for booking, which was definitely not the case). But I had no problem picking up the tickets and reservation coupons from the ticket office, and that's not the point of this report.
The northbound leg involves a Thameslink to PBO, then two LNER trains (PBO-DON, DON-LDS).The travel ticket says, as you'd expect, "Mandatory reservations detailed on coupon 21274-21275". There's one coupon, bearing that double number - again, not unexpected (from my memory of how this used to work pre-pandemic). And that coupon shows both LNER trains. BUT... there are seat reservations detailed on the coupon only for the DON-LDS leg. Nothing for the PBO-DON leg. My booking confirmation provides, as you'd expect, specific seat details. And this is confirmed by the print-out from the GA ticket office till receipt (all 550cm of it - yes, really!).
So is that likely to be just a software error that's caused the first leg's seat reservation to be omitted? Or has the reservation for that train been cancelled, and it's likely to be a free-for-all (i.e. you have to travel on this specific train, but you're on your own finding a seat)? (This would be helpful, as Mrs T and I are booked into seats at opposite ends of the train - that's perfectly fine for a 60-min journey at the cheapest possible fare.) Has anyone else encountered a situation in which one of multiple seat reservations has failed to appear on the relevant coupon?
There's nothing here that I can't satisfactorily explain to the Train Manager. But it's a bit of a curiousity - certainly the first time I've encountered this situation.
Thoughts, anyone? Thanks.
The northbound leg involves a Thameslink to PBO, then two LNER trains (PBO-DON, DON-LDS).The travel ticket says, as you'd expect, "Mandatory reservations detailed on coupon 21274-21275". There's one coupon, bearing that double number - again, not unexpected (from my memory of how this used to work pre-pandemic). And that coupon shows both LNER trains. BUT... there are seat reservations detailed on the coupon only for the DON-LDS leg. Nothing for the PBO-DON leg. My booking confirmation provides, as you'd expect, specific seat details. And this is confirmed by the print-out from the GA ticket office till receipt (all 550cm of it - yes, really!).
So is that likely to be just a software error that's caused the first leg's seat reservation to be omitted? Or has the reservation for that train been cancelled, and it's likely to be a free-for-all (i.e. you have to travel on this specific train, but you're on your own finding a seat)? (This would be helpful, as Mrs T and I are booked into seats at opposite ends of the train - that's perfectly fine for a 60-min journey at the cheapest possible fare.) Has anyone else encountered a situation in which one of multiple seat reservations has failed to appear on the relevant coupon?
There's nothing here that I can't satisfactorily explain to the Train Manager. But it's a bit of a curiousity - certainly the first time I've encountered this situation.
Thoughts, anyone? Thanks.
