LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, I welcomed Sir Brian Robertson's recent announcement
that there would be no increase in railway fares (although as a taxpayer I knew pretty well that what I gained on the fares swing I should lose on the subsidy roundabout). But my modest joy has been severely tempered by a discovery made by my friend Christopher Hollis. `Last Friday,' he says, 'I went to Paddington in order to travel by the 10.30 train to Frome. I travel on that train, I suppose, some thirty times a year. The Frome coaches on it, except very occasionally just before bank'holidays, are never in the least crowded. But last. Friday when I made my way, armed with a ticket, on to the platform, I was told that by a new arrangement it was not possible for me to board the train until I had paid a supplementary fee of a shilling for a reserved seat. .I paid this shilling under protest and then took my seat in an entirely . empty compartment. I had no companion in my compartment. and I noticed that there was only one person in either of the compartments to the side of mine. The pretence of a reserved seat was in fact merely a trick method of raising fares of a particularly odious sort. What is the legal right of the railway to-deny me access to the train after I have already bought a ticket is a matter upon which I am making inquiry. The essential fraud of the trick must be unique even in the history of British railways.' * * *
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