The inbound and outbound journey apply for the whole travel day, not specific trains. Therefore, on your outbound journey you can take as many trains within your country as you residence as like you until you've reached a border or a port. Examples where you can use your outbound journey:

• Travel day 1, Brighton (UK) - Paris | Brighton - London ; London - Paris
• Travel day 1, Groningen (NL) - Paris | Groningen - Zwolle ; Zwolle - Rotterdam ; Rotterdam - Paris
• Travel day 1, Rotterdam (NL) - Paris | Rotterdam - Breda ; Breda - Brussels ; Brussels - Paris

To make it easier to understand: it's a fancy way of saying you may use 2 of your travel days to travel withing your country of residence. One to travel from your country and one to your country. The same rules apply, so you may take as many trains as you want. Hope this helps!

The travel diary example looks odd because it was probably put together before Eurostar was included in the pass, which only happened comparatively recently. The person filling it out has travelled from Paris to London with a separate full-fare ticket, and therefore has not recorded it in the travel diary; so London St. Pancras to Brighton is just the last leg of their journey home.

It is legitimate to take as many trains and make as many changes as are necessary for you to go from your starting point (which doesn’t actually need to be your place of residence) to another country, or to an international port or airport (or city/town with one) that you intend to use.

Passing through electronic gates won’t be a problem, as both types of pass theoretically come with a readily and limitlessly accessible QR code which can scan you through - or just show your pass to a member of staff if this doesn’t work. The number of uses is not limited.

You’re not actively encouraged to make lengthy stops within your own country en route to your chosen border crossing, but at the same time it doesn’t say anywhere that you can’t. If such a rule did exist it would be very hard to enforce, and in any case there would be no real reason to. People need to be allowed to stop for lunch!

What I don’t know about is the legitimacy of using extra trains which aren’t necessary for the purposes of leaving the country. For instance, if I, coming from Oxford in the early morning, were to go straight to London St. Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Lille, but; rather than embarking immediately, instead left my luggage in a locker and went off on a daytrip around South London using the Overground (which is covered by the pass), then returned and boarded the Eurostar in the evening. It sounds harmless enough...

Sorry Mattheas, I have no idea how I’ve managed to unwittingly duplicate your answers twice in 12 hours! I need to learn to type faster 

In any case, I’m very glad you’ve answered my own question - now I know the traveller isn’t restricted to fairly direct trains out of the country and can take as circuitous a route and enjoy themselves as much as they like. Needless to say that’s music to my ears 

Thanks for the (more) clarity. I travel to/from the Netherlands a lot, which notoriously to be one of few, if not the only country to have electronic gates at all main stations. I still find another grey area, Dutch border stations, like Enschede, have separate platforms for domestic and cross-border trains. The domestic platforms have electronic gates, while the cross-boder one, operated by German/Belgian operators, do not. My follow up question is: If somebody living in Netherlands travels from Netherlands to Germany, via Enschede, does the act of checking out from domestic platform at the gate and going in the German train accidentally count as travelling domestically?

I can’t imagine any of these things will be a problem - people are (mostly) reasonable, so if necessary, just explain the situation and show your pass and I’m sure you’ll be allowed to travel freely without hindrance, ticket gates or not!

Yeah I mostly agree to you, but the problem is there is no people in this process, only electronic gates. if someone travels from somewhere else in NL, check outs at a Dutch border station to transfer to the cross-border platform. The electronic database of the Netherlands will register that trip and they will see it as a domestic one, since the cross-border platform does not have the same electronic gates, there is no legal way to prove the traveller will continue the journey outbound, instead of staying in NL. And, because it is an automated system, there is a risk of the pass not being able to open the electronic gate at those border stations in the first place, because the system assumes that the traveller will go straight to other countries without any checking out.

I can tell from experience that this is not a problem. You can go outside the station, get some lunch, and then check back in. And the specific border-train question, as long as you don't cross the border, it's not a problem. You can use the whole outbound travel day to travel within your own country (for ex. Groningen - Hoek van Holland), or only part of it.

Hehe, no probs! And yes, you could take a fairly roundabout route on your outbound travel day. However, I do not know wheter you could use it as a daytrip, to say Brighton, and then continue your journey to Paris or Brussels. I don't think this would be a problem though, but I haven't done this myself.

The QR Code for Netherlands on the paperpasses covers was a 3months QR Code (longest validity of Interrailpasses) within these 3 months you could enter dutch stations as much you like. even if you had pass with shorter validity

I didn't know that! I knew it only was a code to open the gates, but I didn't know it had some information about the validity of the pass in it. Cool!

The Code had no informations about the validity When you scan it the timer for this specific Qr Code started on the System of NS and after 3 Months the system blocked this specific QR Code.

When i travel as railemployee to Netherlands i got a papercard with a QR Code that is valid for 48hrs after first scanning after 48hrs the QR Code is not valid anymore. and i need a new one.

Correct, the QR code is just a dumb code only used for opening the gates. You are not checking in or out.

Ah, thanks for this then. It answered a lot of my concerns. Yeah, the Netherlands being the only countty with widespread use of e-gates creates a lot of grey areas haha (not being negative, just noticing)

By the way, QR codes are not guaranteed to work at these gates, especially QR codes on a screen; also NS has chosen not to open the gates if you have a ticket Belgium Germany via the Netherlands and to show an incorrect error message instead (but that is another topic...).

Anyway, should one of these pesky gates ever refuse to recognise your ticket, just press on the blue Info button, which is usually next to the wide gate, and say you have a valid international ticket but the gates don't like it. The people at the call centre have always been very quick and helpful to me to open a gate.

Thanks for the advice. I have a personal OV-chipkaart, so I can open the gates if the tickets turn bananas anyway. 

Folks, 

I have read this, and then had the experience with a global pass, leaving from Haarlem and then returning to the country… and the gates wouldn't let us out on the trip home.  One of the station cleaners eventually let us out (there is a help button at some station gates that leads to a call centre recording and you get placed on hold indefinitely).

Seewulf's advice is to the point, technically correct, but Dutch IT (I work there) is "houtje-touwtje” made cheaply of baling wire & duct tape, more short term fixes than a NYC street, and seldom works as required.  Living there AND working in IT, one learns to survive.  So, it's often, cleaners are the remaining humans who know what's what in Dutch stations, in which hooligans get away with pushing through a gate that someone else opened, no enforcement. (I think Jean Reno (also a cleaner) would make the best travel companion.)

Was this with a paper pass or a mobile pass?

In case of a paper pass: when was it? NS claim it should work for the whole validity period but you're certainly not the first one with this problem:

https://community.ns.nl/internationaal-reizen-37/interrail-barcode-werkt-niet-lang-genoeg-70611

Hi Rvdborgt, and sorry for the rant about our rail management.  It's heaven compared to the country that I emigrated from.

This happened with a paper pass. 

I am reluctant to use an electronic pass; not due to age and stubbornness, but trying to keep things simple.  I feel a bit sorry for the tourists trying to pass a gate with a mobile app.  They have the app at the ready, but then just as they're about to pass the gate, their screen goes dark, and they are frantically trying to enter a password and dig into the app again.  Whilst the people behind them grow annoyed.

And when was it? This week, this month, longer ago?

Hi rvdborgt, it was Monday 26th September 2022.

I had left NL a few weeks prior, and the paper pass code worked in Utrecht to enter the station.  Utrecht  leaving the station on the 26th was where it did not work on my return home.