Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days. Thanks for the text @AnnaB
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 CE(S)T 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, 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 CE(S)T the day before the travel day.
Thanks for the reply! But I've read this before and it still leaves me confused.
Let's say I add most of my journey to "my trip" and I connect said trip to my pass. This activates my pass and I won't be able to connect another trip to this pass. Yet I would still be able to modify all the journeys I entered in this "my trip" as long as it is before the date of travel?
Will adding the "my trip" to my pass automatically counts the travel day used?
I have a 7 days global pass. Can I just add for now 1 journey to "my trip" and then connect the trip to "my pass" to activate my pass for travelling on monday... And then add journeys 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 later?
What is confusing me is the need to connect a trip to your pass rather than just adding journeys
There is no need to worry:
Once you add a pass to your app you create a TRIP linked to that pass. This is your diary of JOURNEYS, and each pass only has one Trip, even if you break it into more than one excursions from home.
To explain by example - I am about to have a holiday using 5 days from a 10 day in 2 months pass. I will then return home for a few weeks before flying out for another holiday using the last 5 days of my pass. All ten days are recorded in the single Trip attached to that pass.
A journey is any excursion you plan to take, normally, but not necessarily so, linked to a single travel day.
There can be any number of individual or connecting trains per journey, and you can have unlimited journeys in a day.
Just like a diary your Trip is extremely versatile and journeys can be added or deleted throughout the period of your pass.
You then add your journeys to your pass by transferring them from your TRIP before you board the train. If as you are travelling you want to board any train not currently in your trip, you simply add them to your trip, either from the planner or by manually adding it if it doesn’t show in the planner.
That will do for now, but I am sure others in the community will send info on reservations and in/out days.
Thanks so much for the help!
