Yes indeed, Eurostar is run pretty much like an airline. (not saying it's run well or badly ... but like an airline)
Underlines my off-the-cuff solution, really.

I'm brilliant, me.

My point was, airlines work to allocated seating, coaches work to allocated seating. There is no sensible reason why the mode of transport in the middle of the two - trains - cannot work to allocated seating

the main reason is staff, on an airoplane you have staff to make sure you are sat in your seat (or more importantly, that you aren't sat in someone else's) on a train you have one guard for the whole train and, by and large, ignorant passengers who will say things like "but I have a child with me" when explaining why they have taken your pre-booked seat.

then there's convenience, if seats on trains had to be pre-booked (and you could only use that train) then there is no scope for things chaning during the working day/week.

Apart from the fact that many agencies and even rival operators can sell tickets to any given service and presumably they are all operating through their own booking systems so haven't a clue at any given point whether or not there is any space on any given service.

I also haven't a clue how they divvy up the money and I suspect that they don't do it by simply paying by passenger heads - another example that happened to me recently...

...was booked to return from Brum to Leeds on X-Country but somehow ended up having to change at Sheffield, was given two tickets, one for X-Country to Sheff and one on Nthn Trains from Sheff to Leeds, you'd assume here that X-Country get half the fare and Nthn Trains get the other half.

Arrived in Sheffield to be told that the Nthn Trains service had been cancelled but was ushered onto another NT service which was due to leave ten minutes later, just before it did leave the guard kindly told us that his train was going all over the f'kin place at 5mph and it would take an hour and a half to get to Leeds, but if we got off and waited for ten more minutes then a X-Country train would arrive which would take us to Leeds, the X-Country Glasgow service arrived and indeed whisked us off to Leeds pretty sharpish.

Thing is - who got paid for the second half of my trip ?

I suspect that Nthn Rail did, even though they didn't carry me anywhere

Its a f'kin mad set up, you'd have to be in an asylum to invent such a system.

With airlines you have to check-in, that stops people boarding without a reservation.
I can't remember how coaches do it. Do you get your ticket checked when you board? If so, that's effectively a check-in.

Some (mainly local) trains are more like buses on rails, where people expect to turn up and go.
So, OK, we'd make those services unreserved, let's call them railbuses and put them out of our equation for this discussion.

A lot of people on intercity journeys do book and use the seat they have booked, so they are already out of our equation as well.

The remainder are a) On-the-day-turn-up-and-go ... or b) Have booked seats on one train but are using another train at another time ... or c) have an open return.

For a) You could do it if you remodelled the entire booking system (including self-service machines) so that everyone is reserved a seat whichever way they buy a ticket.
For b) You could do it if you had some sort of check-in (or made them forfeit the ticket for their unused reservation, that wouldn't be popular).
For c) You'd have to have some sort of check-in to allocate a seat for the return part.

So, basically, we need a check-in system.

I travelled from Rome to Florence on Eurostar ten years ago.

From the comfort of my British living room I could go on their web site, book, reserve and pay for my seats. I could even have a virtual look around the carriage to see where I fancied sitting. I can't remember exactly how much it was but it was very affordable.

Turned up at the station several months later, scanned my ticket, sat in my spacious seat and arrived less than two and a half hours later at my destination.

People generally sit wherever on the train here, we need a culture shift. We could put little bar code scanners on the seats and if you don't scan your ticket then after fifteen minutes a spike comes up through the seat and stabs you in your Iestyn.

That'll learn 'em.

Just to argue against myself, we don't.

What we actually need is more trains, with a percentage of intentionally redundant capacity.

My Dad, who had worked on the footplate years before, always said that what they used to do was stick some more carriages on the end.
Could we do that now? Would the locos cope with it? I don't know.
If so, then some longer trains would help as well.

Give over: the taxpayer would just have to foot the bill. As it is, new stock is funded (in part at least) by government – when then also pays companies more money to actually run it.

El Barbudo wrote:Just to argue against myself, we don't. What we actually need is more trains, with a percentage of intentionally redundant capacity. My Dad, who had worked on the footplate years before, always said that what they used to do was stick some more carriages on the end. Could we do that now? Would the locos cope with it? I don't know. If so, then some longer trains would help as well. Alakhazam! As if by magic Worst Late Western Trains announce additional carriages

El Barbudo wrote:Just to argue against myself, we don't. What we actually need is more trains, with a percentage of intentionally redundant capacity. My Dad, who had worked on the footplate years before, always said that what they used to do was stick some more carriages on the end. Could we do that now? Would the locos cope with it? I don't know. If so, then some longer trains would help as well. Alakhazam! As if by magic Worst Late Western Trains announce additional carriages

You see, thats the great mystery, thats what no-one who uses the rails understands, including I suspect the people who actually decide how many carriages (or coaches as they like to refer to them on the posh trains) go on each train.

See my earlier example about the formally five coach service to B'ham, suddenly reduced the three with no apparent reduction in demand - someone somewhere decided that would be a good idea, but why, is it cheaper to pull five coaches instead of three, I'd imagine it might be, is it cheaper to pull three coaches crammed with 300 people rather than five coaches with 300 seated, I'd imagine it might still be, is it cheaper to not use two coaches on that service because you rent them from some "rent a train" company and if so do you rent them by the day or by the mileage or what ?

It must be cheaper to put fewer coaches on because I can't imagine why on earth you'd deliberately make all of your clients really annoyed to use your services.

Just don't mention the Northern Rail service on the Harrogate line, I really think that they employ a special type of buffoon to plan that service.