Sir, – My lifelong battle with technology has found a new area of struggle: the Irish Rail seat reservatuion system.
Twice I have boarded a Cork train early as I had no seat reserved. I carefully picked an unreserved seat on both occasions, sat down and spread myself around only to find that after I had sat down and before the train departed my seat had become reserved!
Chastened by this experience, I recently reserved a seat on a Cork-Dublin train. I let people board ahead of me at Mallow. After all, I had a seat reserved and I had the number and details. Not so. My “reserved” seat didn’t exist. Luckily there were seats available elsewhere. On arrival at Heuston I complained to one of the staff in the information booth, who, having thought it over said that some carriages are longer than others! In my life nothing is simple. –Yours, etc,
BRIAN LOUGHEED,
Arlington Heights,
Killarney,
Co Kerry.