I am trying to book Paris to Luxembourg on Sunday 28-May. All the times naturally say reservation required but when I click on them they all turn red and say “seat reservation unavailable” with the blip saying that seats may be sold out. I have checked every train that connects from Saarbruecken to Luxembourg across numerous days of the week and different months and they all say “seat reservation unavailable”. Other connecting trains are giving me the same issue. So I can get out of Paris but the final train to Luxembourg always gives the red unavailable box. Is it really this challenging to get to Luxembourg by train as I haven’t had issues with any of my other routes. Starting to think we might just remove Luxembourg from our trip.
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The direct connection that comes up for Saarbrucken - Luxembourg is a scheduled bus not a train. You cannot book a bus and your pass will not be valid on that, you can always pay for it separately.
There are train connections with a change in Trier, these will be regional trains with no reservations necessary. These probably aren’t showing up as they are slower than the bus.
Via Saarbrucken wouldn’t be the quickest choice anyway. There are some direct Paris - Luxembourg TGVs and if not those then changing in Metz would also be a shorter journey.
You are looking far in advance, all options are likely not available to book yet.
As transport In LUX is free for the direct BUS Srbr-Lux you only pay 5€-for the part in DE. Its an express that takes around 75 mins. Its quite a comfy bus and most times more empty as filled.
As above: there are a few direct TGV, most likely, the most common and apparently xtremely hard to understand for all newbees is that youre to EARly. UNtill very recent th common booking time was up to 2 month. Its a little longer now for TGV, but on days when there are works planned they will hold back def. timings-and thus RES-as the extreme state-burocracy named SNCF (also very liable to strikes) will not want to have people turn up to learn train has left 4 mins earlier or so. From Mtz 1 or 2 commuter trains/hr to L. But DO note that this change must be in the main station-some TGV use an far out of town stop for P&R.
There are even some sites that list all these planned works and for how long, but leave that to dedicated railfans. LInks mostly somewhere hidden in the site of main train.
SNCF (French train operator) opens bookings up to 31/05 on Wednesday 25/01. You should be able to reserve from tomorrow.
All public transport within the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg is for free.
No single train, other than the TGV from and to France, requires seat reservations in Luxemburg (ahja, because it's free anyway!).
You can always use the local planner too, instead of planning via the Rail planner app/Eurail website. Check cfl.lu, and you'll see clearly which connections are a bus and which are trains (and that planner works very fine for the cross border connections btw).
The direct connection that comes up for Saarbrucken - Luxembourg is a scheduled bus not a train. You cannot book a bus and your pass will not be valid on that, you can always pay for it separately.
That is a CFL bus, which is included in the pass. You do need a reservation though.
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.
The direct connection that comes up for Saarbrucken - Luxembourg is a scheduled bus not a train. You cannot book a bus and your pass will not be valid on that, you can always pay for it separately.
That is a CFL bus, which is included in the pass. You do need a reservation though.
This bus isn't included. Just the tickets sold especially for the bus are valid. CFL clearly says: "Toute autre tarification nationale ou internationale n'est pas admise."
And that's true. I used this bus a few times. Same may call the ticket "reservation" but it isn't. Just DB may still call it that way. But even they will sell you in fact the ticket and not a real reservation. There are no reserved places, too.
The ticket is just 5 Euro (9 Euro return) and some may think this is just a reservation fee because of the low prices but in fact you're always paying for the bus ticket.
The direct connection that comes up for Saarbrucken - Luxembourg is a scheduled bus not a train. You cannot book a bus and your pass will not be valid on that, you can always pay for it separately.
That is a CFL bus, which is included in the pass. You do need a reservation though.
This bus isn't included. Just the tickets sold especially for the bus are valid. CFL clearly says: "Toute autre tarification nationale ou internationale n'est pas admise."
OK, that must have changed then, and they didn't inform Interrail/Eurail :/
Previously, a reservation was sold separately at a lower price than the normal fare. I suppose this changed when transport in Luxembourg became free.
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The direct connection that comes up for Saarbrucken - Luxembourg is a scheduled bus not a train. You cannot book a bus and your pass will not be valid on that, you can always pay for it separately.
That is a CFL bus, which is included in the pass. You do need a reservation though.
This bus isn't included. Just the tickets sold especially for the bus are valid. CFL clearly says: "Toute autre tarification nationale ou internationale n'est pas admise."
OK, that must have changed then, and they didn't inform Interrail/Eurail :/
Previously, a reservation was sold separately at a lower price than the normal fare. I suppose this changed when transport in Luxembourg became free.
Indeed this might be the case. I think the ticket has been 8 € before (if I remember it right).
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