Skip to main content

Using the Eurail planning app in Vienna, Austria is pretty problematic. Vienna has at least three separate stations if not more. When you attempt to find a train from Vienna to Salzburg for example, it just shows Vienna until you click it and then you see which station - which is sorta inconvenient but workable. Keep in mind it might take 30 minutes to get from one station to another via undergrounds, so its vital to get this right. 

 

But it gets worse. Sometimes it shows Wien Meidling as station and sometimes not when looking for Vienna. But we found that there actually was a train leaving from there, which did not appear in the app. Finally found it by looking specifically for Meidling Wien. I have no idea how many other valid trains are not appearing. 

You should not use the rail planner app at all to plan. It is not reliable.

For Austria, use the ÖBB website or app.

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, 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 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.

All long-distance trains (RJX, ICE, RJ, EC, RGJ, IC, NJ, EN) stop in Wien Hauptbahnhof the main station. Towards west and south they stop also at Wien Meidling (wich is next to Hauptbahnhof).

Except the NJ/EN Graz-Vienna-Berlin/Warsaw that stops only at Hauptbahnhof. 

Westbahn trains to Salzburg/Munich/Innsbruck start/end at Wien Westbahnhof (West station). All local trains to west start/end at Wien Westbahnhof. Trains to north-west at Wien Franz-Josef-Bahnhof. Other local trains use the “Stammstrecke”, wich go via the city or the main station. 

I often find  it useful when planning to open “all stops” for trains I am interested in. This shows its full journey including start and finish stations. If the central station is not shown you can always search again using the full title e.g. Rome Termini.

This is useful for cities with multiple stations.

Sometimes a planner shows your result as connecting in FRA airport, so you may change it to see if it goes on to FRA HBF. There may be better connections from there, or vice versa.

Key cities include Vienna, Rome and Frankfurt and Naples.

Naples for example has a new station (Napoli Afragola)  where some Freccia trains from Salerno to Bologna now stop without going into Napoli centre, and there is a few Km extra connection needed. 

 

 

 

Actually the current situation in Wien (Vienna) is now much better as it used to be before this splendid HbF came-then you really had to plan if it was West or Ost and the connection between the 2 was by tram. Now about all-and certainly all major trains, use HBF and this is also easy to reach from many directions on the S-bahn (its just a little further walk), all included in the passes.

In Paris and London with their multitude of loose end stations as heritage from days when every province built its own railways its much harder

Reply


Terms and Conditions & Privacy Policy