• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Seat reservations on XC , TfW and TPE on a York to Birmingham via Manchester journey

Status
Not open for further replies.

General Zod

Member
Joined
5 Jan 2008
Messages
565
I may be traveling on TPE for the York-Manchester stretch of a York - Manchester - Birmingham New Street journey . Travel will be on a flexible off peak ticket. I am certain that I have to book a reservation for the XC MAN-BHM leg but can I hop on any TPE train at York without reserving a seat or will the guard prevent boarding if the train gets too full in order to comply with covid security rules ? Secondly if I'm refused boarding on an XC service at Manchester due to full reservations as an alternative could I travel Avanti (if not fully reserved) or TfW to Crewe and then London Northwestern to New street as LNW do not require reservations. What is the situation with reservations between MAN-CRE on TfW ? Are they compulsary or not ?

Thanks.
 
Last edited:
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

Watershed

Veteran Member
Associate Staff
Senior Fares Advisor
Joined
26 Sep 2020
Messages
11,945
Location
UK
I may be traveling on TPE for the York-Manchester stretch of a York - Manchester - Birmingham New Street journey . Travel will be on a flexible off peak ticket. I am certain that I have to book a reservation for the XC MAN-BHM leg but can I hop on any TPE train at York without reserving a seat or will the guard prevent boarding if the train gets too full in order to comply with covid security rules ? Secondly if I'm refused boarding on an XC service at Manchester due to full reservations as an alternative could I travel Avanti (if not fully reserved) or TfW to Crewe and then London Northwestern to New street as LNW do not require reservations. What is the situation with reservations between MAN-CRE on TfW ? Are they compulsary or not ?

Thanks.
I think you may be overthinking things.

Reservations are entirely optional on TfW, TPE and WMT. The latter two don't even issue numbered seat reservations, just nominal 'counted places'.

Whilst Avanti and XC's services are nominally 'compulsory reservation' this is only really the case in the timetable data, as something they've done to force journey planners to issue a reservation for all tickets (and to hide 'fully reserved' services).

I have travelled on Avanti and XC countless times since this policy was introduced; not once have I been asked for a reservation (and not once have I held one!).

The only circumstances where you might ever have difficulties would be if there were exceptional loadings and the staff decided to 'discriminate' on the basis of who did and didn't have a reservation. But that is very unlikely, and as you say, there are plenty of alternatives if it comes to it.

Honestly, don't worry about it.
 

General Zod

Member
Joined
5 Jan 2008
Messages
565
Thanks. I did travel from Kings Cross to Edinburgh recently on LNER and prior to travel the train manager did announce that if you did not have reservation please do not use this service as it will be very busy throughout. It was a Saturday though and the start of the Half Term school holidays. I intend to travel BHM - YRK and YRK-BHM on a Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon respectively, times when trains do tend to be busy.
 

Merseysider

Established Member
Fares Advisor
Joined
22 Jan 2014
Messages
5,388
Location
Birmingham
I think you may be overthinking things.

Reservations are entirely optional on TfW, TPE and WMT. The latter two don't even issue numbered seat reservations, just nominal 'counted places'.

Whilst Avanti and XC's services are nominally 'compulsory reservation' this is only really the case in the timetable data, as something they've done to force journey planners to issue a reservation for all tickets (and to hide 'fully reserved' services).

I have travelled on Avanti and XC countless times since this policy was introduced; not once have I been asked for a reservation (and not once have I held one!).

The only circumstances where you might ever have difficulties would be if there were exceptional loadings and the staff decided to 'discriminate' on the basis of who did and didn't have a reservation. But that is very unlikely, and as you say, there are plenty of alternatives if it comes to it.

Honestly, don't worry about it.
Completely agree with everything here.

I will just add that many (but not all) XC services between MAN and BHM are double Voyagers of 8/9/10 carriages at the moment, which have more than enough seats available.

If a single Voyager turns up it might get quite cosy but you shouldn’t have any problems getting on the actual train.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top