Class 800 - Updates

[The Stationmaster]

An interesting change yesterday as all the 80X units I saw were running on electricity (although with some delay due to 'other causes' to the 18.45 Paddington on which we travelled to Reading) although the people we were sitting next to said their train up from Cardiff earlier in the day had run on diesel all the way to Padd.

 

Mrs Stationmaster, making her first trip on an 80X liked the seats and found them very comfortable with just the right back shape for her but the really interesting news is that 5 car set 008 had the reservation system working and seemingly doing everything it should including the message above one seat saying 'available to Reading, reserved from Reading' and witha red light to warn passengers of that; I was duly impressed.

[Covkid]

Mrs Stationmaster, making her first trip on an 80X liked the seats and found them very comfortable with just the right back shape for her but the really interesting news is that 5 car set 008 had the reservation system working and seemingly doing everything it should including the message above one seat saying 'available to Reading, reserved from Reading' and witha red light to warn passengers of that; I was duly impressed.

 

Interesting.  Does this mean this is the first 800 you have seen with the reservation system working, or is it the first you know of ?

I gather you have ridden on plenty of these in the last 12 months they have been in service.  

[andy stroud]

I travelled in a nine car unit the other day from Stonehouse to Swindon (London train). On approaching Swindon, an automated message announced to change here for Kemble, Stroud, Stonehouse, etc.  The very stations it had just called at!

[St. Simon]

I travelled in a nine car unit the other day from Stonehouse to Swindon (London train). On approaching Swindon, an automated message announced to change here for Kemble, Stroud, Stonehouse, etc.  The very stations it had just called at!

 

That's a function of most PIS systems, it is just a single message per station, the Turbos on the Marlow to Maidenhead Shuttle used to announce 'This is Maidenhead, please change for services to Marlow' even though it had just arrived from Marlow.

 

Simon

[Gwiwer]

Didn't you get the memo? They're all numbered 800305. Apparently the number supplier had an excess of 5s, so they got a discount on the lot.

Following in the footsteps (or wheel tracks) of their illustrious forebears. Anyone with a notebook would tell you there was more than one 47555 because it seemed to turn up everywhere every day.

 

Simon’s pic shows what to my mind is heavily over-specced ohle. No wonder the project is late and over budget.

[jim.snowdon]

That's a function of most PIS systems, it is just a single message per station, the Turbos on the Marlow to Maidenhead Shuttle used to announce 'This is Maidenhead, please change for services to Marlow' even though it had just arrived from Marlow.

 

Simon

It's a function of the PIS losing its sense of direction. On any good on board PIS you can have different messages; which one get selected depends on the direction of travel and/or the route that has been input.

 

Jim

[andy stroud]

That's a function of most PIS systems, it is just a single message per station, the Turbos on the Marlow to Maidenhead Shuttle used to announce 'This is Maidenhead, please change for services to Marlow' even though it had just arrived from Marlow.

 

Simon

 

Surely the system should be capable of knowing which direction the train was travelling in.

[Gwiwer]

Surely the system should be capable of knowing which direction the train was travelling in.

You would hope so. But no. SWR’s new class 707 fleet auto-announce such things as “This train is for Strawberry Hill. The next station is Twickenham where you can change for services to Strawberry Hill”.

[The Stationmaster]

Interesting.  Does this mean this is the first 800 you have seen with the reservation system working, or is it the first you know of ?

I gather you have ridden on plenty of these in the last 12 months they have been in service.  

 

I haven't ridden on all that many but it was definitely the first I've been on where the reservation system was working - but the train was still the wrong way round as were many others I saw yesterday, including 9 car sets.   However I did see a 2x5 formation the right way round today, just a shame it was running on diesel power instead of electricity as it left Reading over the flyover.

[Gwiwer]

GWR seem in no hurry to turn sets. HST sets are also often the wrong way round though could be turned overnight at Laira or St. Philip’s Marsh. Individual coaches are also sometimes the wrong way round within right-way-round sets. All of which makes the booking of seats at best an unreliable event and at times farcical

[Coryton]

In practice (and based upon experience with Cross Country and Virgin West Coast) those little screens are universally ignored and often not even seen. Everyone looks for tickets on the seat backs. When you are blocking the aisle waiting for the screen to scroll through several reservations for the length of a journey whilst hoping you might find a seat you are also inconveniencing your fellow passengers and can be delaying the train if there is a queue to board.

 

KISS should apply. Paper labels are understood, placed where passengers expect them and are quicker to read.

 

I disagree. While the implementation of electronic reservations on previous trains in the UK has been dire in my opinion, I think what they have on the IETs is spot on. The screens are large enough that you don't have to wait for anything to scroll, and in any case the 'traffic light' indicators mean you don't have to pay them much attention unless the light is yellow for 'not reserved now but is later on in the route'. It's even easier to look down the train at the lights than it is at paper labels, and it makes the fact that reservations are up near the ceiling more obvious. And displays on screens can't fall off (or "fall" off). They also simultaneously show the current and the next reservation, so you know if an untaken seat is likely to be claimed by someone else further down the route. I wasn't aware that the earlier systems now did that (an advantage of card tickets) but if they do it by scrolling through the whole list that's also not very handy. The only downside I can see is that it's easier to see which seats are reserved from outside the train with reservation cards, but this could in principle be achieved with suitable information on the external screens. And of course whether the ability to make reservations during a journey is a good thing or not is a matter of opinion.

 

Announced a couple of days ago, the electronic reservations official 'go live' from 8th November, and will replace the paper reservation labels then.

 

It is, apparently, an upgraded system from what Virgin introduced on VWC and XC (it was VTEC that started the introduction of it while they were here)

As well as the displays, which are supposed to be easier to read than previous versions, they have "traffic lights" indicators, Green for unreserved, Yellow reserved for part of the journey, and Red reserved throughout.

Also, although reservations are supposed to become available to book even while the train's running, as on VWC / XC, the system is able to detect which seats are occupied to avoid the situation where you board, find an unreserved seat, only to have somone then reserve it and claim it half-way through your journey

 

Are you sure that red only shows for seats which are reserved for the whole journey of the train? I thought that red meant reserved now, green unreserved, and yellow meant unreserved now but not later. Perhaps I just assumed that's how it works but it seems a more useful way to do it to me. If I get on a train I want to know where I can sit now - having yellow both for "you can sit here now but maybe not for all the journey you're making" and "you can't sit here now, but you might still be on the train when it becomes free" doesn't seem so helpful.

 

As for the reservations not being live yet, it would be nice if it had been made clear that they were under test and should be ignored. I have seen them sporadically in use for quite a while alongside cards (and maybe also without? not sure) and on one occasion there was a card on my reserved seat but the display didn't show it reserved, so I didn't really have any grounds for claiming it from the occupant.

[Coryton]

Engineering problems on the railway (and probably elsewhere too) are usually at the interfaces. The ex-BR chairman Sir Peter Parker once quipped that the trouble with railways was that they tended to fall flat on their interfaces.

 

 

It's certainly been my experience (not in the railway industry).

 

But I'd say that the real problems are where the engineering interface is also a contractual interface.

 

If the organisations on both sides of such an interface have a common goal of making the whole thing work and are in good communication with each other, then solving problems is relatively easy.

 

On the other hand if one (or both) of them are just interested in making money out of the contract whether the overall system actually works or not, or aren't actually permitted to talk to the people on the other side of the interface, then it can get more interesting.

 

And sometimes the interface itself is really a system, which nobody is actually responsible for...

[Coryton]

I haven't ridden on all that many but it was definitely the first I've been on where the reservation system was working - but the train was still the wrong way round as were many others I saw yesterday, including 9 car sets.   However I did see a 2x5 formation the right way round today, just a shame it was running on diesel power instead of electricity as it left Reading over the flyover.

 

Looking back through this thread, I saw that I travelled on an IET with the electronic reservations working in October...last year.

 

If they are still considered on trial, that seems a little unimpressive to me, really.

[31A]

I disagree. While the implementation of electronic reservations on previous trains in the UK has been dire in my opinion, I think what they have on the IETs is spot on. The screens are large enough that you don't have to wait for anything to scroll, and in any case the 'traffic light' indicators mean you don't have to pay them much attention unless the light is yellow for 'not reserved now but is later on in the route'. It's even easier to look down the train at the lights than it is at paper labels, and it makes the fact that reservations are up near the ceiling more obvious. And displays on screens can't fall off (or "fall" off). They also simultaneously show the current and the next reservation, so you know if an untaken seat is likely to be claimed by someone else further down the route. I wasn't aware that the earlier systems now did that (an advantage of card tickets) but if they do it by scrolling through the whole list that's also not very handy. The only downside I can see is that it's easier to see which seats are reserved from outside the train with reservation cards, but this could in principle be achieved with suitable information on the external screens. And of course whether the ability to make reservations during a journey is a good thing or not is a matter of opinion.

 

 

Are you sure that red only shows for seats which are reserved for the whole journey of the train? I thought that red meant reserved now, green unreserved, and yellow meant unreserved now but not later. Perhaps I just assumed that's how it works but it seems a more useful way to do it to me. If I get on a train I want to know where I can sit now - having yellow both for "you can sit here now but maybe not for all the journey you're making" and "you can't sit here now, but you might still be on the train when it becomes free" doesn't seem so helpful.

 

As for the reservations not being live yet, it would be nice if it had been made clear that they were under test and should be ignored. I have seen them sporadically in use for quite a while alongside cards (and maybe also without? not sure) and on one occasion there was a card on my reserved seat but the display didn't show it reserved, so I didn't really have any grounds for claiming it from the occupant.

 

 

I've travelled on LNER trains quite a bit in the last week or so, and from my observation of the system it seems to operate as Ken described.  There have also been paper labels, but in each case the electronic system has been a mirror of what the labels say.

[Coryton]

I've travelled on LNER trains quite a bit in the last week or so, and from my observation of the system it seems to operate as Ken described.  There have also been paper labels, but in each case the electronic system has been a mirror of what the labels sa

 

Interesting. So with that system the lights shouldn't have to change during a journey, but the three colours aren't offering information on the three states that a passenger is generally interested in: reserved now/not reserved now but is later/not reserved at all. E.g. if I get on in Aberdeen to go to Edinburgh, I'm happy with a seat reserved only from Edinburgh onwards, but not one from Aberdeen to York, so showing them both as yellow isn't helpful. Given that for long journeys trains tend to be much fuller at the London end than the other, I would have thought there would be a lot of yellow lights. Maybe the system doesn't have information on the train location.

 

Now I think about it, I have seen the lights on the GWR 800s change on approach to a station, so perhaps they work the way I thought they did.

[HillsideDepot]

GWR's IET leaflet says

 

Red the seat is currently reserved
Yellow the seat is reserved later on in the journey
Green the seat is not reserved

 

 

Edit: to complete message as it posted before I'd finished typing!

Edited November 4, 2018 by HillsideDepot

[Covkid]

Looking back through this thread, I saw that I travelled on an IET with the electronic reservations working in October...last year.

 

If they are still considered on trial, that seems a little unimpressive to me, really.

 

That pretty much sums the situation up in my view.

Richard Branson unveiled the first East Coast Azuma in March 2016 - yes two and a half years ago.

Despite that there are issues with the "stepladder" inner ends and electronic interference which are preventing their introduction to traffic next month. I find it pretty disappointing to be honest even though I know the perfect "straight out the box" train had never yet been designed.  

[31A]

Interesting. So with that system the lights shouldn't have to change during a journey, but the three colours aren't offering information on the three states that a passenger is generally interested in: reserved now/not reserved now but is later/not reserved at all. E.g. if I get on in Aberdeen to go to Edinburgh, I'm happy with a seat reserved only from Edinburgh onwards, but not one from Aberdeen to York, so showing them both as yellow isn't helpful. Given that for long journeys trains tend to be much fuller at the London end than the other, I would have thought there would be a lot of yellow lights. Maybe the system doesn't have information on the train location.

 

Now I think about it, I have seen the lights on the GWR 800s change on approach to a station, so perhaps they work the way I thought they did.

 

I shall look more carefully the next time I travel.  I must admit I didn't pay too much attention to whether the lights changed colour en route as I either had a reserved seat myself (York-Aberdeen & back) or found an unreserved one (green light) on the other two journeys (York-Retford & back).  On the way to Aberdeen on the Leeds-Aberdeen HST I noticed the seat across the aisle from me showed red and displayed "Reserved to Durham", and after Durham it had changed to "Reserved to Dundee".  At first I thought I'd misread "Durham" and it had always said "Dundee", but looking at the printed label showed that it was reserved Leeds-Durham and then again Newcastle-Dundee.

Edited November 4, 2018 by 31A

[Gwiwer]

 

Red the seat is currently reserved

Yellow the seat is reserved later on in the journey

Green the seat is not reserved

 

 

 

 

There is probably never going to be a perfect system.  But this is as unhelpful as any other version to my mind.  Red - OK the seat is reserved now.  Green - it's not reserved at all (and there are a few seats which are "unreservable" if one delves deep into the GWR seating plans, quite apart from those not reserved because they are not in demand).  Yellow?  Is it reserved at any point on my journey or not?  If I board at Penzance for Truro is it reserved from St. Erth?  If I board at Penzance for Taunton is it reserved between, say, Plymouth and Exeter but not at the start and end of my journey?  

 

A paper label will convey that information readily.  Or as readily as any system yet devised.  No system is foolproof and no system accounts for the vagaries of the customer in occupying which ever seat they fancy disregarding their or anyone else's reservations.

 

I will admit to moving my own reservation ticket at times.  That releases the seat I choose to not occupy and I then occupy an unreserved one of my choosing which suits me better. Usually on the Night Riviera when I am booked in the open coach but prefer the brake because there are fewer seats and therefore fewer chances of being disturbed all night by talkative fellow passengers.  Until recently the brake also had dimmer lighting and larger and semi-reclining seats but now that all vehicles are refurbished those have gone; now the brake has more seats facing forward on the down trip because the open is almost all uni-directional facing London.  One cannot move one's reservation to a better seat with electronic signs.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Gwiwer

[Coryton]

There is probably never going to be a perfect system.  But this is as unhelpful as any other version to my mind.  Red - OK the seat is reserved now.  Green - it's not reserved at all (and there are a few seats which are "unreservable" if one delves deep into the GWR seating plans, quite apart from those not reserved because they are not in demand).  Yellow?  Is it reserved at any point on my journey or not?  If I board at Penzance for Truro is it reserved from St. Erth?  If I board at Penzance for Taunton is it reserved between, say, Plymouth and Exeter but not at the start and end of my journey?  

 

A paper label will convey that information readily.  Or as readily as any system yet devised.

 

And the electronic displays also readily (without any scrolling) convey the information on the next two reservations, somewhere that's easier to read than leaning over the seats. And unlike a paper ticket it can't slip down so you think there's only one reservation but there's another one lurking hidden below (you can guess how I know this could happen). The traffic lights are in addition to the written information, and something paper tickets don't have. If you don't like the traffic lights, just read the screens as you would a paper label.

 

I think it's about as good as it gets. Green light - fine. Yellow light - read the description - is it available until I get off? And, if all else fails, look at the seats with red lights to see if there's one that hasn't been claimed at a previous station. It's a lot faster than reading each label (and having to know the order of stations on the line to know if a seat is reserved for part of the journey ahead or for part of the journey that's already happened).

 

Now it's true that a red light might mean the seat is free for a later part of the journey, but adding another colour for that would, in my view, cause more trouble by making the system complicated.

 

 

 

I will admit to moving my own reservation ticket at times.  

 

I agree that's an advantage of card tickets. Even though strictly it shouldn't be done it's fairly harmless and useful. But I would argue that the advantages of a good electronic system outweigh the disadvantages by quite a long way.

 

(And, now I think of it, I haven't seen anything as good as this one in another country, yet).

[caradoc]

There is probably never going to be a perfect system.  But this is as unhelpful as any other version to my mind.  Red - OK the seat is reserved now.  Green - it's not reserved at all (and there are a few seats which are "unreservable" if one delves deep into the GWR seating plans, quite apart from those not reserved because they are not in demand).  Yellow?  Is it reserved at any point on my journey or not?  If I board at Penzance for Truro is it reserved from St. Erth?  If I board at Penzance for Taunton is it reserved between, say, Plymouth and Exeter but not at the start and end of my journey? 

 

 

Sorry but how is the new system unhelpful ? The Red and Green signs convey an immediate message, and Yellow also shows between which stations the seat is reserved.

[Banger Blue]

I can’t see how you can go wrong with this system (when/if it works!) Don’t forget there is also a digital display with the relevant info to back the lights up

 

Green - Seat not reserved.

Yellow - Seat reserved on a forthcoming part of journey.

Red - Seat reserved for that part of the journey.

 

The one time I’ve actually seen the system work, I boarded a Paddington bound 9 car IET at Hanborough. The seat in front had a yellow light lit, the display read, “Reserved from Oxford - Paddington”

As the train rolled into the platform at Oxford the yellow light extinguished and the red light came on.

 

When it works it works well.

[iands]

I can’t see how you can go wrong with this system (when/if it works!) Don’t forget there is also a digital display with the relevant info to back the lights up

Green - Seat not reserved.

Yellow - Seat reserved on a forthcoming part of journey.

Red - Seat reserved for that part of the journey.

The one time I’ve actually seen the system work, I boarded a Paddington bound 9 car IET at Hanborough. The seat in front had a yellow light lit, the display read, “Reserved from Oxford - Paddington”

As the train rolled into the platform at Oxford the yellow light extinguished and the red light came on.

When it works it works well.

I guess, unless you are colour-blind! But then you can always read the digital display.

[The Stationmaster]

GWR's IET leaflet says

 

Red the seat is currently reserved

Yellow the seat is reserved later on in the journey

Green the seat is not reserved

 

 

Edit: to complete message as it posted before I'd finished typing!

 

Now interestingly the one I saw the other day was showing red for a seat that was reserved from Reading but was red well east of Reading (around about Southall).  I wonder if the system is sufficiently clever to recognise that particular situation as being a bit different from other reserved enroute situations?

[Coryton]

Now interestingly the one I saw the other day was showing red for a seat that was reserved from Reading but was red well east of Reading (around about Southall).  I wonder if the system is sufficiently clever to recognise that particular situation as being a bit different from other reserved enroute situations?

 

What particular situation? (Which way was the train going?)