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I am trying to book a train from Salerno, Italy, to Rome, on the morning of November 10.2022.  In the eurail  desktop, I show only trains starting at 3PM.

When I go to the Italiarail site, there are many morning trains, at a cost of about $25 pp to start.  I did not indicate I am a passholder, so I don’t know if passholders can board earlier trains than 3PM, that are missing from the Eurail site.

Basically, I don’t know if the Eurail pass allows me to board any Italiarail train at any time, and if I need reservations, where I can buy them beforehand.

The best way to make reservations for the Italian daytrains is ÖBB. You can learn more about that in the link in the section about reservations below.

 

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.

There are lots of trains in the morning you can use. If you don't see them on the Eurail website, then Eurail has not updated recently. Unfortunately, they don't update frequently enough to be a reliable planning tool.

Italian domestic trains do not have special pass holder quota, so as long as there are seats available, you can book a pass holder reservation. The fastest trans need a reservation, see the Italian country information.

You are simply too early-for the early trains. It should be self-evident that site of railway itself is first/best to consult, but even this may by now still not be complete. RES anyway is only-if lucky, from 2 month before.

@rvdborgt  “Italian domestic trains do not have special pass holder quota, so as long as there are seats available, you can book a pass holder reservation. The fastest trans need a reservation, see the Italian country information.”  

So, I’m looking at Trenitalia for that trip, Salerno to Roma Termini 11/11, and I see these trains:

 

If I’m reading your post correctly, I can just board any of these trains using my Eurail pass, with a reservation?  I don’t see where I can just purchase a reservation, these appear to be full price tickets WITH reservation.  I apologize, but there are so many moving parts to this, it’s mind-boggling.  

If I’m supposed to purchase a seat reservation directly with the rail company (not Eurail), where do I indicate that I’m using a pass, and only need a reservation price?  

You can’t book passholder reservations through the trainitalia website.

 

Interrail website sell them as well as Austrian national operator OBB which would be the recommended option. The link above from @AnnaB explains how to do this.

Passholder reservations are €10 on Frecce… trains and €3 on IC. other train classes such as R, IR do not require reservations.

 

Also as said, you are probably a bit early, Italian trains don’t all appear on planners at the same time and they can take a bit longer to filter down to 3rd party sites.

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