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Booking european rail tickets online

Holiday Ideas & Foreign Travel
didds
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Booking european rail tickets online

#191167

Postby didds » January 5th, 2019, 8:12 am

Ive been here before in TMF days biut its an ever changing environment so here goes again.

DAK of a decent online rail ticketing site? One where I can put in Chippengham-Baden-Baden return and dates, my railcard and it give me options and prices for a return trip?

Googling provides me with sites that can do Londont-BB, or Chip-BB but with the UK leg (75 minutes each way) more expensive than Lon-BB, whoch surely cant bve right?

loco52.com or whatever it is is useless - they never ever return emails/enquiries and phones are never answered.

any ideas?

didds

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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191203

Postby Lanark » January 5th, 2019, 10:44 am

https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml

The one limitation is that you can't book the UK part of the journey online with Bahn, probably due to the currency difference and/or eurotunnel not playing ball.

didds
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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191243

Postby didds » January 5th, 2019, 12:57 pm

Lanark wrote:https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml

The one limitation is that you can't book the UK part of the journey online with Bahn, probably due to the currency difference and/or eurotunnel not playing ball.



cheers Lanark - and so back to square one (that's not a dig!). Its still a site where I cant book any end to end ticketingetc.
didds

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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191249

Postby malkymoo » January 5th, 2019, 1:15 pm


swill453
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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191261

Postby swill453 » January 5th, 2019, 1:30 pm

didds wrote:and so back to square one (that's not a dig!). Its still a site where I cant book any end to end ticketingetc.

Any particular reason why you need to be able to book end-to-end from one provider? It seems to be a requirement that's massively reducing your choices (and potentially increasing your cost).

Any holiday I book these days is always mix-and-match to get the best deal, times etc.

Scott.

didds
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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191278

Postby didds » January 5th, 2019, 2:30 pm

basically scott because I am totally confused by it all!

ive so many questions over all of this sort of thing but seemingly no where to find answers...

first cab off the rank...

If I book a ticket Chippenham-London (in reality paddington) and a ticket St Pancras -> baden-Baden, does tyhat cover underground Paddington-St Pancras? Because if I booked Chipp-Edinburgh (for example) it would - biut of course I can book Chip-Edin on a single website. Its not a biggy - just5 trying to work that out.

Then If my Chip-Padd serrvice gets delayed for whatever raison and I miss StP->BB ... is my StP->BB ticket valid on another service or is it just tough and I either buy a whole extra ticket, or give up and go home ? Let alone BB->StP is delayed or the tube is delayed or whatever and I miss the scheduled Pad-Chipp train am I now stuffed to have to buy another Padd-Chipp ticket?

I perceive (but may be wrong) once I begin the end-to-end bookable StP->BB bits any delays are automagically covered ... but presumably that isn't the case if I have to book Chip-Padd totally separately?

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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191301

Postby Slarti » January 5th, 2019, 4:51 pm

didds wrote:basically scott because I am totally confused by it all!

ive so many questions over all of this sort of thing but seemingly no where to find answers...

first cab off the rank...

If I book a ticket Chippenham-London (in reality paddington) and a ticket St Pancras -> baden-Baden, does tyhat cover underground Paddington-St Pancras? Because if I booked Chipp-Edinburgh (for example) it would - biut of course I can book Chip-Edin on a single website. Its not a biggy - just5 trying to work that out.

Then If my Chip-Padd serrvice gets delayed for whatever raison and I miss StP->BB ... is my StP->BB ticket valid on another service or is it just tough and I either buy a whole extra ticket, or give up and go home ? Let alone BB->StP is delayed or the tube is delayed or whatever and I miss the scheduled Pad-Chipp train am I now stuffed to have to buy another Padd-Chipp ticket?

I perceive (but may be wrong) once I begin the end-to-end bookable StP->BB bits any delays are automagically covered ... but presumably that isn't the case if I have to book Chip-Padd totally separately?


I know that it was a while back, but in 2010 I went from Witham, Essex to Schliersee, Bavaria and back, by train.

After quite some messing about and help from a nice young man at the Deutsche Bahn number in the UK I ended up with the following tickets
Witham to London, including Zone 1, period return
St Pancras to Munich period return
Munich to Schliersee
Schliersee to Munich

It would have been possible to get a ticket from St Pancras to Schliersee, but this would have cost about £250 extra, each :shock:
The reason for that was if the last leg, on a different company, was included we couldn't get the DB discounted ticket from Brussels to Munich. And the period return on the local train actually cost more than 2 singles.

A quick look shows that the local trains are now part of DB, so 2 tickets may be possible.

So for the bit confusing you, you need to book Chippenham-London including zone 1.

I suspect that StP->BB will be a simple ticket.


I broke things up a bit, travelling up to London and staying in the Kings Cross Premier Inn the day before we were getting the Eurostar. That way we got an earlier train in the morning and were able to have a relaxed connection in Brussels.

We also stopped for 2 nights in Koln an the way down, because we wanted to have a look at it. On the way back we spent the night in the Accore(sp?) hotel across the road from the Eurostar station in Brussels, just to brake what would have been a massively long day.

HTH
Slarti

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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191331

Postby Lanark » January 5th, 2019, 7:19 pm

didds wrote:I perceive (but may be wrong) once I begin the end-to-end bookable StP->BB bits any delays are automagically covered ... but presumably that isn't the case if I have to book Chip-Padd totally separately?

This depends on the type of ticket

Advance fares are Single (one-way) tickets. These tickets are only valid on the date/train specified.
Off-Peak - Buy any time, travel off-peak.
Anytime - Buy any time, travel any time.

Trainsplit is great for finding cheap routes, but you may want to add extra delays between connections when using Advance or off-peak tickets
https://raileasy.trainsplit.com/

The trainsplit website has this advice:
At least one of your tickets is an advance fare. You must travel on this itinerary or your tickets won't be valid. Provided that you arrived in time for your first train, if you are then delayed and miss a connecting train, or if a train is cancelled, you will be allowed to catch a later one (although you must still observe any route or other ticket restrictions). If this happens, we suggest you get your tickets endorsed by the guard on the delayed train, or at a ticket office.

Note the wording in there "you will be allowed to catch a later one" that doesnt actually say your ticket will cover the later journey, in reality miss the connection and you will have to buy a new ticket.

The FareSplit thing really only comes into its own when buying First class tickets, if I can save £200 I'm quite happy to wait a bit longer between connections.

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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191378

Postby Alaric » January 5th, 2019, 9:41 pm

didds wrote:If I book a ticket Chippenham-London (in reality paddington) and a ticket St Pancras -> baden-Baden, does tyhat cover underground Paddington-St Pancras?


The answer is no, if it's a Paddington ticket, but you should be able to get a London Zone 1 ticket at a higher price. Alternatively just touch your contactless bank card on the barriers at Paddington Underground and King X St P.

I have this idea that if you are travelling on Eurostar and you buy your ticket from them, you can get a domestic add on to cover you from the UK domestic station. That also helps if there are delays on the line to Paddington or the Underground causing you to miss your Eurostar train.

The real experts on this sort of thing hang out at www.railforums.co.uk, so it might be worth setting up an account and posing your question of how to get from Chippenham to Baden-Baden by rail at the best price and with delay protection.

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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191469

Postby UncleEbenezer » January 6th, 2019, 12:25 pm

swill453 wrote:
didds wrote:and so back to square one (that's not a dig!). Its still a site where I cant book any end to end ticketingetc.

Any particular reason why you need to be able to book end-to-end from one provider? It seems to be a requirement that's massively reducing your choices (and potentially increasing your cost).
Scott.

My concern there is "what if one leg is delayed and I miss a connection"? Given that most long-distance travel involves reservations on a particular train, that could come out horribly expensive. Booking through a single source means it's much more likely I'll have a single point of recourse if the worst happens.

Less of a problem if you're just on hols and could, for instance, improvise a day touristing somewhere unintended. But when you have to be somewhere it's really not good for the blood pressure.

I fear I've actually let that put me off long-distance rail travel. When I tried to book to Budapest best I could do was three legs[1] from different suppliers: too scary. I expect to try again for travel to Berlin later this year: I should certainly prefer it to flying if I can get a decent booking.

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Re: Booking european rail tickets online

#191474

Postby UncleEbenezer » January 6th, 2019, 12:34 pm

Alaric wrote:I have this idea that if you are travelling on Eurostar and you buy your ticket from them, you can get a domestic add on to cover you from the UK domestic station. That also helps if there are delays on the line to Paddington or the Underground causing you to miss your Eurostar train.

I've tried that quite a few times and been frustrated.

Actually no, I can book it (provided I don't want to do anything exotic like book a hotel at my destination while travelling from not-London). But that was kind-of worse the day I arrived back at Kings Cross only to find London Transport denied me use of the tubes, because the gate staff didn't recognise a Eurostar through ticket. Just missed my train from Paddington (it was pulling out as I arrived), and the threat of worse disruption from the continuing heavy snow was not good for the blood pressure.


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