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Book with ID card, travel with Passport and ID card to UK

  • 21 October 2022
  • 7 replies
  • 152 views

Hey,

I will travel to London. My Passport is ordered, but not yet delivered.

Can I book the trains with my ID now and travel with both, ID & Passport, later?

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Best answer by rvdborgt 21 October 2022, 11:22

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Userlevel 7
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You can book any trains you want. You don't need any ID or passport to book trains.

Also check this thread for the best places to book:

 

Userlevel 7
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Check availability an book the Eurostar as soon as possible. 

There is a limited number of pass holder seats on the Eurostar and on popular departures and during high season those sell out weeks, and sometimes months in advance.

The best place to see the availability of passholder seats and make reservations on the Eurostar is 

https://www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass#TravelWish

Press "later trains" and eventually you will find the next available connection. 

 

If you have a mobile pass you need to generate a Pass Cover Number in order to make the reservation at b-europe. You do that here in the PCN generator:

https://community.eurail.com/news-and-announcements-39/pass-cover-number-generator-is-live-5653

You can book any trains you want. You don't need any ID or passport to book trains.

Also check this thread for the best places to book:

 

but It sais I need to enter an ID to activate my Pass… Does it have to be a Passport or is it possible to use my ID, as long as i have a Passport when I’m entering the UK?

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

but It sais I need to enter an ID to activate my Pass… Does it have to be a Passport or is it possible to use my ID, as long as i have a Passport when I’m entering the UK?

You don't need to activate your pass to book reservations.

It's fine to use your ID card for activation, as long as you bring it with you.

However, it's best not to activate your pass until your start date. You can only cancel the activation until 23:59 CET before the start date. If something happens on the planned start date, and you want to postpone travel, but you have activated your pass, then you can't deactivate anymore and you can loose (a) travel day(s).

but It sais I need to enter an ID to activate my Pass… Does it have to be a Passport or is it possible to use my ID, as long as i have a Passport when I’m entering the UK?

You don't need to activate your pass to book reservations.

It's fine to use your ID card for activation, as long as you bring it with you.

However, it's best not to activate your pass until your start date. You can only cancel the activation until 23:59 CET before the start date. If something happens on the planned start date, and you want to postpone travel, but you have activated your pass, then you can't deactivate anymore and you can loose (a) travel day(s).

Ah ok, thank you!

Userlevel 7
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but It sais I need to enter an ID to activate my Pass… Does it have to be a Passport or is it possible to use my ID, as long as i have a Passport when I’m entering the UK?

You can activate the pass with your National ID and use the passport to enter the UK, no problem. However, the advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to activate the pass just before entering the first train of your travel. Please read more about that below. 

Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days. 

 Planning

The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries. 

 Reservations 

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website.  You can look at the guide in the link:

https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105

If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.

Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.

 Activation of pass

During the activation process, when you choose the start day of the validity of the pass, the first day of the validity period is automatically made a travel day, even if you don't enter a journey, the advice is therefore not to activate the pass before the first travel day as you only can deactivate the pass before 00.00 on the day the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you will loose travel days if you have activated the pass in advance.

It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.

 Activation of travel day

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass and create the ticket (QR code), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage  You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.

 

Userlevel 7
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One word of caution,  you must have a passport to enter the UK. Although an ID card would satisfy the IR travel if challenged on trains the customs border force will refuse entry from any route.

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