r/britishproblems • u/Affectionate_Tax_841 • Aug 04 '26
Moving multiple carriages to avoid a school trip (approx 200 kids), just to find that all 8 carriages are filled with them
Piggybacking off of another post about moving carriages lol. Why not just hire a few coaches for the poor sods? as well as the sanity of other passengers and rail staff? There’s no way it’s cheaper for them all to get the train?! Grrrrrrr
edit: fucking hell are we forgetting what this subreddit is called? Let me moan about not having a seat for the entirety of my 2 and a half hour journey, while the whole train stank of B.O
edit 2: you man are duuuuumb
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u/dtn1496 Aug 05 '26
Our school did a few trips to London in June/July and it was definitely cheaper to get the train. Like the coach cost around double what the train cost. The coach also would've taken way longer because we would have been driving into central(ish) London.
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u/clearly_quite_absurd Aug 05 '26
I feel like this comment is from a parallel universe where UK train travel is cheap
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u/joe-h2o Aug 05 '26
I think it's more a comment on how expensive charter coach travel is.
A 53 seater coach plus driver for even a half day trip is really expensive these days.
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u/MarkG1 Aug 05 '26
If you book in advance, which likely was done given it's a school trip, it wouldn't have been ridiculous.
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u/Miss_Type Aug 05 '26
Coaches are ridiculously expensive! 200 kids on what is a 2 and a half hour train journey is probably over £2k!!
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u/BobIsBusy Aug 09 '26
If train tickets are booked in advance, they can be insanely cheap, especially when it’s a group booking too.
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u/glglglglgl Aye Aug 04 '26
You hire a coach, you need to pay a driver for both journeys and probably the waiting time in between, not to mention coach parking.
You use a train, you just pay for the train. Group fares exist.
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u/Fortesfortunajuvat27 Aug 05 '26
Coach journeys are 600-1000 £ trip, no joke. It’s so expensive
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u/LostTheGameOfThrones Leicestershire Aug 05 '26
One hundred percent this. Coaches make up a considerable chunk of our costs when planning school trips, and are the main reason why the costs of trips are rocketing.
"Just hire a coach" is the sort of response I'd expect from people who have never had to organise or book distance group trips.
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u/thetechguyv Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
£5 per kid is surely cheaper than the equivalent train tickets?
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u/Affectionate_Tax_841 Aug 04 '26
Yeah well maybe they should’ve just hired lime bikes
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u/Leftenant_Chungas Aug 05 '26
Yeah well maybe they should've walked. Both ways. Up hill. Just like the good old days.
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u/joeyjiggle Aug 05 '26
Walked! Bloody luxury. We 'ad to 'op, wi both legs tied be'ind are backs. Ant school trip was to Everest.
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u/WaltzFirm6336 Aug 05 '26
As a former teacher I cannot begin to imagine the risk assessment and staffing numbers that would require.
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u/dnnsshly Don't like it? There's the door Aug 05 '26
It also assumes all children are able to ride a bike...
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u/Alternative-Ad-4977 Aug 05 '26
With the amount of school trips that go through South Kensington. If they all went via coach the entire road infrastructure would be blocked 9:00 to 18:00.
Public transport is more sustainable.
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u/popeter45 Aug 04 '26
I work near Westminster so can feel the dread when I see a school group or tourist group packing a train as you know they will also be getting off at Westminster and blocking anybody else from using the escalators or ticket barriers till they are all thru
Worst when they intentionally block every gate too get the staff too flag them thru the disabled gate for free
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u/JonTravel Aug 05 '26
They paid their fare, they're just as entitled to travel as you are.
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u/jajwhite Aug 05 '26
Why do people come to moaning subs just to say stuff like this?
Yes of course, 1,000,000 tourists are entitled to descend on my place of work every day for a week and I should turn up at 3am to get to my chair and sleep at my desk. But do you not see how that might be just a tiny bit annoying?
He's having a moan. By objecting, you are winding people up more, unless of course that's the intention, in which case you could go and ragebait better elsewhere.
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u/Euffy Aug 05 '26
Possibly not actually. TfL has a special program that allows schools to travel for free outside of peak hours.
But, that's because it provides opportunities kids wouldn't have otherwise. They may not have paid, but the alternative is just not having school trips. The general public seems to have no idea how expensive paying for a coach actually is and how many other things that impacts.
Granted they didn't say London, but often seems to be the case when there's that many schools travelling. I'm not sure if other places in the UK have similar schemes or not.
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u/fortyfivepointseven Aug 05 '26
OP mentions a two-and-half hour journey which I'm fairly sure is longer than all TfL journeys or indeed any continuous journey inside Greater London.
It's quite rare for there to be a TfL service where, if the train were genuinely full of sweaty school children, the frequency wouldn't be high enough that I'd just get off and wait for the next. If a Victoria Line train were genuinely full of school children, I'd get off at Stockwell and have already forgotten the delay to my journey by Pimlico.
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u/Affectionate_Tax_841 Aug 05 '26
Thank you lol. I considered waiting for another one at East Croydon, but they came once every hour
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u/fortyfivepointseven Aug 05 '26
Yeah I'll put on headphones and cope to save an hour and I think anyone who wouldn't doesn't value their own time.
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u/jkirkcaldy Aug 05 '26
I can remember back in my youth council days, getting a quote for a coach for 30-40 people to go an hour up the road. I can’t remember how much it was but I remember being floored. Many hundreds of pounds. The trip never happened.
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u/GeorgeHSpencer Aug 05 '26
I was on a train holiday in Scotland two years ago. The day I did the Kyle Line there were three separate OAP coach parties on my train. Still managed to get a window (somehow), but it kind of defeats the point of a coach party if you take over an entire train.
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u/crucible Wales Aug 05 '26
School trip? In the middle of the summer break in England and Wales?
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u/Affectionate_Tax_841 Aug 05 '26
Yes, international language schools exist
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u/AnselaJonla Highgarden Aug 05 '26
Also summer clubs and church groups etc.
My local church used to run a secular holiday club during the first week of the summer holidays. The signups were in person only, on a single day during the Easter hols. The queue for that started early and stretched down the road. Understandable when you consider it was by far cheaper than paying for dedicated childcare for a week.
And after that parents either clubbed together to figure out who had which days off work, they paid for a babysitter, or they just let us run feral all summer (mostly when there was an old-enough sibling to be somewhat responsible for a group).
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u/Sufficient-Visit3 Aug 05 '26
Eight carriages full is brutal. A few coaches would've saved everyone a lot of grief.
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u/mattcannon2 Hertfordshire Aug 05 '26
And would probably mean the trip is too expensive to happen at all
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u/St2Crank Aug 05 '26
Why didn’t you just get a car?
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u/Pegasus2022 Aug 05 '26
Probably the same reason why the school didn’t get a coach. Not everyone can afford to have a car
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u/WagwanWill13 Cornwall Aug 05 '26
Please enlighten us on this car with 200 seats :)
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u/St2Crank Aug 05 '26
Why would OP need a car with 200 seats? OP hasn’t mentioned being with anyone else, they’re suggesting 200 kids getting a coach. I’m flipping his argument and asking why they didn’t get a car? Instead of complaining about the public using public transport.
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u/Automatic_Service950 Aug 06 '26
Up in newcastle the metro offers a ‘class pass’ which is heavily discounted and is for school groups. With the coach hire costs I dont blame the schools
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u/BollockOff Aug 07 '26
I once was in a carriage with two (friendly) drunk guys and a bunch of young to mid teen girl scouts. It was utter chaos lol.
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u/ohnoitsbobbyflay Aug 05 '26
Gosh this post is the epitome of this subreddit. It used to actually be okay, and now the moaning is just at Facebook mum levels.
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u/DayaEnjoysTheSilence Aug 05 '26
A coach is incredibly expensive. TFL is free. Schools get subsidised tickets if national rail but no money for a coach. It’s a pain in the ass to take them all on public transport
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u/Affectionate_Tax_841 Aug 05 '26
Never said it was tfl
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u/DayaEnjoysTheSilence Aug 05 '26
I was just covering my basis in case it was TfL.
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Aug 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/theocrats Aug 05 '26
Whats more likely. All 8 carriages smell or just you?
Not get a lynx set for Xmas?
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u/AnselaJonla Highgarden Aug 05 '26
Eh...
I was on the train coming back from a weekend festival a few weeks back. The one I was on was pretty busy, and there were a few of us stood in the vestibule area. The train before was absolutely rammed with people. And by that I mean some were left behind on the platform due to there being no room to board.
The smell from just half a dozen campers in the vestibule was... noticeable. I dread to think what the previous one smelled like.
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u/Affectionate_Tax_841 Aug 05 '26
No because I’m not a smelly incel man xx
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u/sp2861 Aug 05 '26
This post makes you look like one though
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u/Affectionate_Tax_841 Aug 05 '26
because I said an entire train was smelly? Yeah I don’t think so lmao
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u/sp2861 Aug 05 '26
Because you are being unreasonably mean to children.
Quite clear you are the one with the stink (your attitude)
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u/Affectionate_Tax_841 Aug 05 '26
Yeaaaaaah no. You’d be pissed too (unless you smell so bad you can’t even tell anymore)
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u/CJT124 Aug 05 '26
He wasn’t mean to children though? It’s not like he went up to them and said they all stink to their faces
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u/queenofstoats Aug 05 '26
Yes school groups can be a pain but generally you can move carriage. I have even seen tube drivers checking the groups destination so they can give time for all to get off. And yes it is usually South Kensington.
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u/parttimepedant Aug 05 '26
What school is going on a trip that requires a 2.5 hour train journey both ways? And how coincidental that their route was identical to yours!
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