Gatwick to St. Pancras Station Train

Question

I am getting mixed messages online as to if we can travel Gatwick to St. Pancras with our Eurail pass. I am travelling with my wife and two kids and really don't want to have to go Gatwick to Victoria and then try to take the tube and walk to St. Pancras. But i’m also very disappointed if I have to pay almost 39 pounds for the 4 of us to travel direct to St. Pancras.

ON the Eurail site they say Thameslink trains are included but on the App planner i can’t get it to show anything for Gatwick to St. Pancras.

Any help or recent experience would be great!!

Thanks, Jason

Al_G · Accepted Answer

ALL trains in UK are valid with your pass with the exception of Heathrow Express and local metro/underground/tram networks.

You can take any train from Gatwick you please without reservations.

Trains Direct to St Pancras run several times an hour under the Thameslink brand. They all run through to other destinations, the best ones to get are the fast trains with 5-6 stops between Gatwick and St Pancras, These are mostly trains with Bedford or Cambridge as destinations. There are also slower trains with more stops, these usually get overtaken by the following fast, there is no problem taking these but they take around 60 minutes with the fast taking 45.

All that is based on the regular weekday service pattern, as you haven’t said what date there may be a different or even altered service running.

Gatwick station has plenty of staff, if in doubt just ask for assistance.

The app planner is not always accurate, it is always better to use local resources for planning.

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk gives times and updates for all British rail services.

There are wide scale strikes planned for 15, 17, 26 and 27 September in UK, travel anywhere on these days may be disrupted or impossible.

AnnaB · Answer

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, 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.

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