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Reservations between Prague and Austria seemingly unavailable?

  • 22 November 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 259 views

I am looking to book a journey from Prague to Hallstatt on Jan 5 and while the Eurail site shows that reservations are not required, for my anxious wife’s peace of mind I would like to try to reserve a seat wherever possible for our holiday.

I have tried booking via eurail.com, oebb.at and cd.cz and selected various settings with either the Eurail pass discount or seat-only options and I have attempted to change the journey simply from Prague to Linz to try to reserve that seat. On all of the sites I haven’t been able to reserve seats so I was wondering whether the allocation for pass holders has been exhausted or if I am doing something wrong.

I can see via the cd.cz site that there are still seats available to reserve, but when doing so I get the message “The booking period for this reservation has not yet begun or has already expired.”.

The oebb.at site just says “No ticket required” and I don’t get the option to add on the Seat Reservation and eurail.com gives the generic “unavailable” message.

Hopefully I am just misunderstanding the system, I would rather not show up in hopes that we can find a seat, especially if the seat map that I saw shows only a couple of 1st class compartments remaining.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

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Best answer by rvdborgt 22 November 2022, 11:35

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Userlevel 7
Badge +9

On tickets.oebb.at, use the "Seat reservation only” in this case.

If that doesn't work, then please specify the exact trains you'd like to book, including their departure times.

When booking via Seat-Only it says that no tickets are available. 

And when I do it via a One-way ticket with the Eurail pass discount I can proceed past this screen but them don't get the option to reserve a seat. 

 

As you can see this is for the 10:21 train from Prague to Linz. From what I can gather, there are no reservations from Linz to Hallstat. 

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

I'm not sure what the problem is on 5 January. On the 2nd and the 6th, seats are available but not on the 3rd, 4th and 5th.

On the other hand, Prague - Linz is not a busy route so you shouldn't worry. Maybe try again next month.

Linz - Hallstatt is a regional train for which reservations are not available.

Userlevel 7
Badge +5

There MAY simply be-this is very often in CZ, and the line is single track, so no ALT, works on those days.

The best site-no need to even think about, is always that of railway concerned-in this case CD.cz, the blue+white trains. IF that also denies RES, i will show if there is perhaps some short BUS in between, which explains it all. Worrying about RS here is IMHO simply a waste of time.

Userlevel 7
Badge +9

The best site-no need to even think about, is always that of railway concerned-in this case CD.cz, the blue+white trains. IF that also denies RES, i will show if there is perhaps some short BUS in between, which explains it all. Worrying about RS here is IMHO simply a waste of time.

@mcadv please check websites yourself before speculating or making any claims. None of the websites mention any engineering works or rail replacement bus.

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