I travel on Irish Rail a lot. I never use the online seat booking system. Well, I used it once before, but once in 300+ journeys over the last 12 years is not much. On this occasion, however, travelling with my son into Dublin on a Saturday, I decided I needed to.

After selecting your train ticket type and times, you’re taken to the seat booking screen. The trouble is, it’s really hard to tell which is the front of the carriage and which is the back. They’re not marked. This is important if you like to face the direction of travel. Also, you’re not sure which is the front of the train, and which is the rear. Is Coach A at the front? I assumed so, and booked accordingly.

The main area of doubt for me was that the only other time I had booked a ticket, the train had arrived back to front, with Coach A at the back. So, on that occasion I did what every other passenger seems to do, at least during the week: they sit anywhere, even on a booked seat that’s not their booked seat, thus rendering the seat booking system a farce.

Anyway, coach A was at the front when we got on, but coach A was premier class, and I had booked standard. We sat there anyway. On the online booking system you have the option to have displayed your name or your booking reference number. I had chosen booking reference number. When we found our seats, they simply said ‘Seat booked from Galway’. How would we have proved that these were indeed our booked seats?

For the return journey, we booked coach A again. When we got to the platform, coach A was the first carriage, at the back of the train…

Room for improvement, methinks.