Overnight validity of travel day in case of missed night train

Hello @geustah 

It seems to match with the AJC (Agreement on Journey Continuation):

You should receive a delay confirmation or cancellation confirmation from the railway undertaking whose train was delayed or cancelled. You can use this confirmation together with the original ticket of the train whose service you missed2. The staff of the delayed or cancelled train will assist you with this. Please show this confirmation and the original ticket to the staff of the railway undertaking whose train you missed.

But the AJC is not always clear. How could the staff of a cancelled train assist you?

I don’t know if your ticket will be available after midnight in the Rail Planner, I never used it with a night trains. I would make a screenshot of the QR code and another screenshot with the pass number and the selected journey (scroll down). You could also obtain a compensation for the delay.

@geustah 

It is true, with the AJC you should normally use the same transporters, but the Interrail Global Pass is valid for DB and ÖBB.

It is a special case, the ticket is valid but the reservation for the night train has another transporter (MAV).

Thank you all for your views.

For reasons of organisation taking an earlier train from Brussels is not an option, I would gladly go for it if it was. As I said, I would be willing to take the risk, if I was sure to be able to continue with the alternative IC without wasting another travel day.

MAV is also a signatory of the AJC, but I understand that might not help because the AJC states “you should be able to take a later train if you miss yourconnection, on condition that the later train is also operated by the same company whose planned service you missed and for which you had a ticket”. The alternative is a DB train so if they take AJC seriously they do not need to assist me and accept the MAV Euronight journey encoded in my Interrail, correct?

However, on the ÖBB website it is possible to make a single reservation all the way from Cologne to Budapest, for two of the ICEs and the MAV Euronight train. Would this not be a “single contract of carriage” which would nevertheless make me eligible for “Assistance, free of charge, to help you reach your final destination, but only if your arrival at your final destination will be delayed by at least 60 minutes. The type of assistance you are entitled to includes continuation or re-routing”?

(Funnily enough the early morning train that I could catch with the overnight IC to Vienna is actually the MAV Euronight train I missed, as it spends more than an hour in Salzburg where the IC overtakes it. I was actually wondering whether in Salzburg they would let me into the couchette car where my reservation is, but seeing it would happen at 2 am the conductor may be asleep in his/her cabin + I asked on an earlier occasion and they do not have the obligation to keep my couchette available if I do not occupy it in Augsburg, so it might be already sold to someone trying their chance last minute in Munich.)

In practical terms, Eurail will give you another travel day if you get stuck like this. Do you have an extra day on your pass you can use while Eurail CS gets back to you?

Arguing about AJC at 2am with a Hungarian train crew doesn’t sound like much fun!

@geustah

Unless DB (1080) were also explicitly mentioned as transporter on the ticket of the Euronight,  it is not possible to consider this journey as a through-ticket: