On Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:56:43 -0700, jonmorris
wrote:

On 6 Sep, 23:53, "John Salmon" wrote:

Not usually true in my experience; it's a myth started by one of the
denigrators of GNER in uk.railway. I travelled from Retford to
London and back today using GNER Advance tickets, sitting in
unreserved coach H each way, wth no difficulty. Of course, they are
entitled to make you occupy your reserved seat, and apparently it
happens occasionally - but never to me.

On our trip to Edinburgh (First Advance), I'd removed the reservation
tickets from the seat to look at them - and left them on the table.
This was because we'd booked airline seats, but been given window
seats. More confusing than that was the fact that we had 'A' seats
(airline) but was told it stood for aisle. Great theory, except the
numbers meant window.. A doesn't mean window!

Back in the good old days, seats facing each other across a table
shared a number; hence one was able to book a seat with face to
direction of travel, which is particularly useful for those who suffer
certain forms of kinetosis.

The new trains operated by Virgin and GNER (and possibly others, but
those two run 99% of the trains on which I reserve seats) have
uniquely-numbered seats, the result of which is that one cannot
reserve a seat with face to direction of travel, despite
thetrainline.com still offering it as a booking option - all seats are
listed as Airline (which simply means that the booking system doesn't
know whethere they will be Face or Back on the particular journey).

Personally, I always request forward-facing seats, and if I get a
backward-facing one, I move. I've had to explain myself once (in
somewhat over 50 journeys); and the staff member didn't complain.