Travelling in country of residence

You can take as many trains as you want on a travel day. And as many trains you need to take to get out the country.

A travel day is valid from 0:00 - 23:59 CET. Or 23:00 - 22:59 in GMT.

Ah that’s great, thanks. I had it in my head that i could only book one journey on my outbound travel day.

Is the rule that you can only have one outbound travel day, (as opposed to one outbound journey) and the same returning?

also, re the travel day. With the mobile pass, does it activate each travel day in turn, as in, the pass automatically activates a travel day once the time is 00:00?

thanks

Hi Peter,

the outbound/inbound travel days are basically an upgrade you can use on any of your pass-travel-days to take as many trips in your home country as you wish on the specific day.

From my experience, not even the direction matters, as one might return from a trip by another mode of transport and leave the country again by train (using the “inbound” travel day).

Happy traveling!

David

If you have a pass with a certain number of days, to be used in a month (e.g. 7 days pass to be used in a month) you need to activate every travelday yourself. It doesn't do it automatically.

If you have a continuous pass (15 days, 1 month, 2 or 3 months of non stop travel) you'll also activate travel days to generate the QR code for that day, by adding the trips to your pass.

You can activate travel days by tapping the slider in "My Trip", which generates the QR code. Once it's activated, no way to annul it the day itself. You can add (or delete) as many trains as you want on a travel day.

So only activate your pass and activate a travel day just a bit before boarding your first train of the day! You never know - disturbances in traffic can always happen!

I have a reservation to go from London to Paris on the 5th of April, but I live in Glasgow and so have to book a ticket first from Glasgow to London on the same day.

Your pass is your ticket. It may be wise to book a reservation Glasgow-London though, which is free of charge from any GB ticket office or via the LNER or GWR websites.

Also don't use the rail planner app or the Interrail website to plan your journeys. For GB, the national rail website is way better.

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.

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.

Hi AnnaB, thanks. I have already booked a bunch of reservations for quite far in the future (April/May) and have received the e-tickets for them from the train companies operating on the route. Are you saying that these could be wrong? I booked them via the interrail reservation system on the website.

If you have a pass with a certain number of days, to be used in a month (e.g. 7 days pass to be used in a month) you need to activate every travelday yourself. It doesn't do it automatically.

If you have a continuous pass (15 days, 1 month, 2 or 3 months of non stop travel) you'll also activate travel days to generate the QR code for that day, by adding the trips to your pass.

You can activate travel days by tapping the slider in "My Trip", which generates the QR code. Once it's activated, no way to annul it the day itself. You can add (or delete) as many trains as you want on a travel day.

So only activate your pass and activate a travel day just a bit before boarding your first train of the day! You never know - disturbances in traffic can always happen!

thank you. So just to be clear (total novice here), once I have approached my first day of travel- I have a two month global pass of continuous travel- I should activate the whole pass, and then as a separate task, activate the first day of travel too? And then for every other day of travel, I have to activate that particular day, just ahead of my first train? I suppose my clarification is, do you have to manually activate each travel day? Thanks.

Hi AnnaB, thanks. I have already booked a bunch of reservations for quite far in the future (April/May) and have received the e-tickets for them from the train companies operating on the route. Are you saying that these could be wrong? I booked them via the interrail reservation system on the website.

In that case, they're very probably correct. When the Interrail website can book a reservation, then the timetable it has matches the one in the operator's system, otherwise the booking fails. But when you're using the Interrail website only to look up timetables, then you don't know if those 2 timetables match.

Hi AnnaB, thanks. I have already booked a bunch of reservations for quite far in the future (April/May) and have received the e-tickets for them from the train companies operating on the route. Are you saying that these could be wrong? I booked them via the interrail reservation system on the website.

In that case, they're very probably correct. When the Interrail website can book a reservation, then the timetable it has matches the one in the operator's system, otherwise the booking fails. But when you're using the Interrail website only to look up timetables, then you don't know if those 2 timetables match.

Ah yes, i figured that could happen. I have always double checked on the countries specific website for timetables as i imagined the interrail centralised system might not be super up to date! Thanks for your response.

If you have a pass with a certain number of days, to be used in a month (e.g. 7 days pass to be used in a month) you need to activate every travelday yourself. It doesn't do it automatically.

If you have a continuous pass (15 days, 1 month, 2 or 3 months of non stop travel) you'll also activate travel days to generate the QR code for that day, by adding the trips to your pass.

You can activate travel days by tapping the slider in "My Trip", which generates the QR code. Once it's activated, no way to annul it the day itself. You can add (or delete) as many trains as you want on a travel day.

So only activate your pass and activate a travel day just a bit before boarding your first train of the day! You never know - disturbances in traffic can always happen!

thank you. So just to be clear (total novice here), once I have approached my first day of travel- I have a two month global pass of continuous travel- I should activate the whole pass, and then as a separate task, activate the first day of travel too? And then for every other day of travel, I have to activate that particular day, just ahead of my first train? I suppose my clarification is, do you have to manually activate each travel day? Thanks.

Just for clarification:

A mobile pass tries to emulate a paper pass, where you enter every train into your pass book as you travel. Adding the train detail in both paper and mobile passes validates your pass for you to travel on that specific train.

With a mobile pass it works by a 2 stage process where you add the train details into your Trip as a diary of intention. Until you transfer it into your pass it is simply a diary entry and has no validity until transferred to your pass, by operating the slider. You can add trains to your trip either directly from the train planner or manually if the train is not showing in the planner (e.g. Spain Ceranicas often don’t appear).

With the first train you transfer on any travel day the App creates a QR code for the whole of that day and adds the specific train details below the QR code. This is your ticket for that train. As you travel on more trains that day and transfer them to your pass the details are added below the QR code and become your valid ticket for any train listed - just as the original paper pass had to have the train written in to validate it for that train.

OOI if the inspector cannot read the QR code the pass details as well as the train are also listed in plain text. Very useful in the UK which still uses bar codes or contactless tickets on many trains.

Just for clarification:

A mobile pass tries to emulate a paper pass, where you enter every train into your pass book as you travel. Adding the train detail in both paper and mobile passes validates your pass for you to travel on that specific train.

With a mobile pass it works by a 2 stage process where you add the train details into your Trip as a diary of intention. Until you transfer it into your pass it is simply a diary entry and has no validity until transferred to your pass, by operating the slider. You can add trains to your trip either directly from the train planner or manually if the train is not showing in the planner (e.g. Spain Ceranicas often don’t appear).

With the first train you transfer on any travel day the App creates a QR code for the whole of that day and adds the specific train details below the QR code. This is your ticket for that train. As you travel on more trains that day and transfer them to your pass the details are added below the QR code and become your valid ticket for any train listed - just as the original paper pass had to have the train written in to validate it for that train.

OOI if the inspector cannot read the QR code the pass details as well as the train are also listed in plain text. Very useful in the UK which still uses bar codes or contactless tickets on many trains.

Thank you. This is really clear. I appreciate you taking the time to write this! It’s what I needed to read. Thank you

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