David Mitchell

I was disappointed to hear about the upgrades to the Enterprise train service since they would render my previous blog post on the subject (‘19 strange things about the train between Dublin and Belfast’) obsolete. A new train station, better booking system, and more frequent trains. No more gripes from me.

But not to fear. While the new timetable and new station are great, there are still plenty of strange things about the train between Belfast and Dublin.

Despite much media coverage of the discrepancy, the prices are still different depending on whether you book in the north or the south.

Some of the Enterprise trains are Irish Rail trains. They call ‘Grand Central Station’, ‘Lanyon Place Station’.

When you book in the north, you now get four choices of ticket: Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Flexible, Enterprise Semi-Flexible, and Enterprise Low.

Once you pick one, your booking confirmation email gives you a QR code. Previously, you had to take the QR code to a person at the ticket desk in Belfast to get your printed ticket. Now you can go to a person at the fancy new barriers in Grand Central to get the QR code scanned and ticket printed, or go to a ticket machine and put in a reference number from the confirmation email.

There are four different reference numbers on the confirmation email.

When you eventually punch in the right one, your ticket is printed and you take it to the barriers. The ticket has a QR code (not to be confused with the one you get in the booking email). You scan the paper ticket and get through the barrier. Then you immediately get the ticket punched by a person.

Ending another anomaly, you can now book a seat if you book in the north; before, you could only do this if you booked in the south. However, the seat number is only on the booking email, not the printed ticket (tickets collected in Dublin do have the seat number). So you arrive on the train trying to remember if your seat is D26 or E14 or Z99. You fumble again for your phone, scroll and zoom, and see the tiny little number. You walk through the train in search of the seat which will have your name on a screen above it. But all seats are marked ‘available’. Or the screens are blank.

Where do you sit? Anywhere. Until someone comes along and says you are in their seat. You explain that the booking system isn’t working and it doesn’t matter where anyone sits. Does that mean that trying to work out the little seating plan of the carriage on the website and clicking on a preferred seat was a waste of time? It does. You took this train a few days ago and the booking system wasn’t working then either. You write blog posts about the quirks of this service. You’re an expert. Relax. Sit anywhere. We just have to explain all this to people boarding at every stop.

If the booking system is working, hope that you put enough care into your seat selection during booking that you didn’t book a seat beside the only other person in the carriage. That’s awkward!

If someone is in your seat, fight them.

Or shrink away and click into the wi-fi. And again. Click click click.

But you won’t be able to find your seat anyway because the carriages aren’t well labelled and no-one on this earth knows which number above the seat is the aisle seat and which is the window seat. Stand outside the toilet.

When the announcement says, ‘We are now approaching Dublin Connolly’, disembark. Jog.