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Mobile Pass / Trip backup

T

Hi,

I think this subject must’ve been covered a thousand times in these forums but I either don’t quite get the restrictions or can’t quite believe a more solid backup solution isn’t available.
I currently have my trip (for the whole family) on my mobile phone. It’s a three week trip spanning about 6 countries in Europe. My fear is losing my phone as there appears to be no way of having a back-up. I read somewhere you can transfer your trip details onto another phone but how do you do this if you’ve lost it?! (you can’t seem to have simultaneous duplicates!)
The Interrail website doesn’t seem to have a cloud duplicate of your phone app either - this seems crazy but I believe it is correct.

Any ideas on what to do (apart from not lose or break your phone) would be very useful. The stress and cost implications of losing your one travel pass is doing my head in!

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Best answer by BrendanDB 30 May 2023, 14:33

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BrendanDB
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It’s suffices to open the app on your new device and go to My Pass to add your Pass using your last name and Pass number from the order confirmation email. When asked, tap 'Move Pass' and follow the steps to have your Pass moved to the new device.

That’s all you need to do.

Although, I we usually recommend that everybody has his er her pass at hand though, it’s more convenient for ticket checks, passing gates. You can share the final itinerary in “My trip” by tapping the three dots, and “share as link” with everyone of your fellow travellers.

T

Thanks Brendan,

What is it actually doing though? Moving the pass or making a copy of the pass? By simply moving it you are not removing the chance that you might lose all the trip information because it is just located on one device?
Sorry if I seem a bit thick here but I’d just like to know we have a back-up of the trip.

A
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Planning your travel is better done elsewhere than in the Railplanner-app. Use the apps/websites of the national railways and write down the information about the trains in excel or similar. Then you add the trains as journeys in the Railplanner a few days before the departure and activate the journey just before boarding the train. 

The Railplanner works off-line and will not show any last minute changes and cancellations so you should always check the departure time with an online app/website. 

Please note that I don't work for Interrail/Eurail and that I don't reply to personal messages.
A
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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 you choose the start day of the validity of the pass. Once the validity has started it can't be changed even if you haven't travelled. The advice is therefore to wait with activating the pass and starting the validity until the first day of your travel as you only can deactivate the pass no later than 23.59 CET on the day before the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you can't deactivate the pass and change the validity. 

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.

Please note that I don't work for Interrail/Eurail and that I don't reply to personal messages.
BrendanDB
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Yeah, like @AnnaB says,  I also use the app just to register the trains in just minutes before boarding. With non-reservable trains (90% of all trains in Europe), you just hop on the first one you can get on.

What I do, is to put all the long-distance trains, which have been reserved, in my google agenda (and that of my fellow travellers), so everybody gets a nice notification to get on the train.

When interrailing, I also have a google spreadsheat in the cloud, to fall back on. Sometimes even an old school paper :)

T

I’ve booked seat reservations on nearly all of my trains so I know we’ve got seats. I think I’m just going to have to have my fingers crossed and then just not use Interrail again. It just seems too hit-and-miss!
The lack of a cloud back-up accessible on your account via the web is unforgiveable in my opinion.

Thanks for your advice though, appreciated. ;)

BrendanDB
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I never moved an active pass to another, so I actually don’t know for sure if it remembers your journeys or not.

If you compared it to just 5 years ago, where you only had a paper pass and lots of paper reservations where you had to take very good care of. In comparison to that, there’s plenty of back-up now with the mobile version and pdfs of reservations 😅

But it’s still a bit fiddly, but nothing to be scared of though. It goes smoothly in the vast majority of cases.

Most, if not all accounts of the railway companies where you can reserve seats remember these as well on your account, often transferrable in an app (their own).

But it’s not one all encompassing, simple, functional app over all of Europe. Remembering trips, reservations, tickets, and having all the real time information. But unfortunately That’s still a dream, but it shouldn’t hold you back to enjoy your interrail holidays.

T

Are PDFs of the reservations acceptable?

BrendanDB
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Are PDFs of the reservations acceptable?

Of course they are, almost nobody has them on paper anymore.

Only for night trains it’s advisable to print them out, as the attendant usually keeps them.

T

OK useful. I’ll try and find out how to make PDFs of my journey bookings.
Thanks. ;)

BrendanDB
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Where did you make your seat reservations?

T

Mostly on the actual train company’s websites (Not Interrail).

BrendanDB
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Okay, good. If you made an account on DB or ÖBB the reservations should show in their respective apps e.g. The rest is usually sent in pdf.

T

Yep, I have those seat reservations as PDFs! ;)
Not the tickets themselves though as these are all on the Interrail App on my phone.

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