Hello, is there a separate way to book the in/outbound journeys or does the app automatically know you are leaving & re-entering your country (UK, in my case)?
In other words, do I book my outbound normally, by searching for travel times & days, like you would for all the other journeys?
Many thanks,
Julia
The outbound/inbound travel days are just ordinary travel days that occur in your home country.
If you have a mobile pass they will be automatically marked.
If you have a paper pass you mark them yourself.
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 ticket 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, 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.
Hi - I@m new to this so forgive me if this seems obvious to the veterans or those better finding help articles. I’m in the UK.
Can I just arrive at the station on my outward journey day having set the departure day as a travel day (also set as my first day of the trip).
Will the QR code allow me through the barrier and sallow me to travel on a train or do I need to reserve the train or perhaps book the ticket using my interail ticket to waive the fee.
I’m wanting to travel from Leicester to London to catch the Eurostar.
Is there a really good guide to using non-reservation required trains that any of you can recommend so that I can find out about securing a seat on a non-reservation required train.
Thanks in advance.
Gerard
Welcome to Interrail.
I assume you have read the guides on using your pass and understand “Trips” and “Journeys”. Not quite what we Brits call a trip.
Simplistically - to travel with an Interrail Mobile Pass you need to enter the trains into your Trip. This is only a diary of intentions (A wish List) and you can add or remove any train journey as you see fit. These can be added from the planner or manually if you can’t see it in the planner - It happens. This can be done right up to boarding.
When you are ready to travel you simply activate it by moving the slider. The first train on any travel day has a show ticket button which generates a QR code, which is your ticket for all trains you add to your pass from your trip for that Travel day.
For trains that either are not reservable or optional reservations that is all you need to do.
If a train requires a mandatory reservation (listed in the planner or on the operator website) you will need a separate reservation and there are several ways this can be done (see the guide above).
If reservations are optional you simply follow the same process - recommended if you (like me) like to be certain of a seat.
In the UK there are no services with a mandatory reservation (but many operators recommend them).
In the UK they are normally no reservation fees.
Brilliant - thanks so much - I'm reading loads but finding it hard to hang the words on to something I’m not yet actually doing so I appreciate the support and reassurance.
Just to add - in wanting to get in touch with my regional train provider to check out how I could make a reservation, I used Facebook Messenger to ask the question and got a really helpful response about how and when. Posting that here for other travellers.
Feeling more confident as a result of this conversation.
Thanks
Gerard
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