There is a very persistent misconception that the seats in the train exist only in common cars, that is, having acquired seats, you will be forced to ride in a regular reserved seat car, only three, or even four passengers will sit on each lower shelf. Moreover, tickets are sold just like that - places on them are not indicated, and whoever was the first to do it, he sat by the window. And it may happen that you have to go and generally standing. By the way, driving by the window in a common carriage is not too much fun. It is much more profitable to occupy the top shelf, tickets for which are generally not sold in such cars. But here it all depends on the "kindness" of the conductor. If you manage to occupy the top shelf, then in this case you will travel with relative comfort, however, only in a horizontal position.
But, as mentioned above, this is a fallacy. In fact, the seats in the train are not located in general, but in the seated car, although the common car can also be called seated. But this is not about him now. An ignorant passenger in railway realities does not seem to distinguish an ordinary reserved seat car from a seated one, but as soon as he climbs the stairs and enters the car itself, everything becomes clear. At first glance, it might seem that you made a mistake at the train station and instead of the train got to the bus station, or the railroad workers made a mistake and designed the interior of the car as a salon of a comfortable intercity bus. Yes, very similar.
Seats on the train, the location of which is very similar to the bus, appeared relatively recently. It is precisely this novelty of them that is caused by the fact that many people consider such cars to be common in the old memory. The seats are located on either side of the central aisle, two or three side by side. Passengers put their luggage on special shelves, and the seats themselves, like the bus ones, recline. That is, on the road you can afford a fairly comfortable nap.
Another similarity with the bus lies in the fact that the so-called "elite" extends to the seats on the train, that is, there is an unspoken list of priority places that are bought first. But if the bus is for the most part places located in the front of the passenger compartment and near the window, then on the train the situation is somewhat different. The number of windows in the car does not match the number of rows of seats, because some of them fall into the window gap. These places are considered the most unpopular.
If you buy train tickets via the Internet, the seats on the train may not correspond to the scheme posted on the website, so you can not guess and purchase just such an uncomfortable place.
However, even buying tickets at the railway ticket office does not guarantee a 100% hit. Cashiers may simply not know what type of seated wagon will be attached. Or at the last moment the car will be replaced by another. And it is impossible to guess how exactly the seats will be located on the train. You can buy tickets in such a car, where, as in the train, the seats will be arranged in pairs facing each other. And here those places that are located along the train will be considered "elite".