Depending on how flexible you are with your travel and when & where you want to travel I would recommend that you check availability of seats before you buy the pass. This is only relevant if you plan to travel with trains that require reservations. Please ask in the Community if you need advice. In that case, start a new topic.

You purchase the pass at eurail.com. As there are many different passes you need to decide which pass that best suits your travel plans. 

This pass IS the ticket-if you follow all the steps that also need to be done to get it activated and on traveldays the actual precise traintrips you intend to take. It will then generate a QR-code that conductors scan and check.

Even though most of all the many trains here in EUR do not even allow any REServ-most newbees all want to use exactly those trains that do and are also hard to get. This forum is full of complaints and panicky questions about that. it may be instructive and amusing to read/scan a few and see what the normal beginners faults tend to be. Maybe you decide to forget this pass and simply book normal tickets-fine too. The major bottlenecks-certainly for running hi-season/summer are this €* LON-EUR and hi-speed trains in FRance and ESpana.

As the previous post says your pass is your ticket to travel on all the trains from the providers in the network of 33 countries. There are a few operators outside the scheme but they almost always operate alongside the state operators, who are in the network. To board a train you only need to add it to your travel day in your pass and, for some trains, acquire a separate reservation

Many first timers are confused by the need for a separate reservation but that is because the Eurail pass  only covers the base ticket and doesn’t guarantee a seat. 

Some operators require a mandatory reservation for their high speed and long distance trains and in a few cases such as Eurostar these are on quota for pass holders. Others offer the opportunity to make a reservation but you can just hop on and use any free seat with your pass.

There are many regional trains across Europe that are free to use and don’t even offer a reservation facility.

Acquiring the reservation can be done in several ways and varies in both process and cost across all the different operators. There are many guides on the community.

Yes, thank you but I know the pass is the ticket. But the Eurail site only tells me how to add the mobile pass to my device. That’s VERY clear, but I cannot see how to purchase one.

My issue is that I cannot get the tickets here in time by mail. That is why I have chosen the mobile pass.

Purchase from eurail website https://www.eurail.com/en/eurail-passes/global-pass

you will get pass details e-mailed to you shortly after purchase, you can then add pass to app.

OK, thank you. Exactly my question.

So I purchase a global pass and add that to my app.

(Unfortunately nearly everywhere we are traveling requires reservations:-(

Thanks

Where and when will you be travelling?

After searching this option, I found that you cannot check seat availability prior to purchasing a pass.

As for “asking the community”, that is what I am doing here!

We fly into Rome August 18, train to Pisa then to Milan on the 21st. Then to Paris on the 23rd and on to London on 25th. 

The rest of the trip is car rental.

I doubt that it will be worth buying a Eurail pass for those trips. And you need to check the availability of the Eurostar from Paris to London. 

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 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

I priced out individual contries and it was quite a bit more. 

I purchased the tickets and booked the trip from Paris to London (assuming it would be the first to fill) and got the seat time I wanted.

Hope this is all going to go smooth.

Thanks for the advice.

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