I have reserved several train seats as I know that that is the train I want to take however there are several days I want to travel to places and NOT reserve seats as some do not allow for seat reservations. I am not sure of the exact train I will be taking and have several times to choose from. When I load the trip into Eurail I have to put a date and time but do I have to be on that time train or can it be any time train that day?
Best answer by Yorkie
View original1.again-there we go: do NOT put all your now planned trips in it-just wait til the day-as it is bound to change in between. The RES, if needed at all, are all separate from that so do not interfere. Best advice is really to add trains really taken just before at platform or in hall-there may be hickups, strikes, changed plans, works on the line, delays (so that you can even catch a train that should have left) and so on.
We have seen dozens of sad reports from people on this forum who had a masterplan planned and saw it go down the drains and then had to forfeit traveldays.
2.On some lines service is so frequent that it does not really seem to matter (comparable to nr of trains over that famous bridge by StateRail in SYD), but it still has to. Pus that in general in the app you just have to choose what time-on the old paper one had to check more.
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 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
Thanks for the information but it still doesn’t answer my question. I will give an example. Going from Zurich to Lauterbrunnen via Interlaken. Probably take the 8:02 train from Zurich. Have to buy tickets from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen as they are not covered by Eurail pass. Will them return to Interlaken and take train from Interlaken to Zurich via Lucerne. The problem is I do not know what time we will travel from Interlaken to Zurich as it depends on how long we spend in Lauterbrunnen and Interlaken. So I have started using my “Travel Day” when we left Zurich, but do I need to decide before we leave Zurich on what trains we will be coming back in the afternoon, or can we jump on any train back (as we will not be reserving seats for this day).
You add the journey with your train to your Trip and then connect the journey in your Trip to your pass just before boarding the train when you know what train you will travel with.
You never need to decide any travels in advance, unless you need a mandatory reservation. And the advice is to never activate a travel day in advance.
If it helps just consider your trip as a diary where you can add or remove trains at will at any time before travelling.
You could for example put a train at 1000 from a to b on 1/1/2023. On the day you realise you can catch a different train at 0900. You simply delete the 1000 train and add the 0900 train. Then just before boarding the train you activate the slider in your trip which creates a travel day and adds the specific train to you travel day QR code.
If you then leave that train and decide to continue to station c at 1400 you simply add that train to your trip. operate the slider for that train and your pass now shows both trains with the same QR code.
You can amend your trip as many times as you want, and even if you have added a train to your pass and then decide not to board it you simply slide the bar back to remove it from your travel day, and if you want add an alternative.
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