France and Spain train advice.

You can use the bahn.de (German rail) for scheduling information. Cannot buy ticket there unless the trains starts or ends in Germany. But the site is easy to use and has about 99% of the train schedules for all of Europe. When you go to buy tickets used the national rail site for that country. Rail Europe, E Rail, etc., are all travel agency and resellers of tickets - sometimes at substantially markup with additional service fees. You can print the tickets at home. Bring the credit card that you charged the tickets. Conductor may ask for it. Keep in mind, with a couple of exceptions, train tickets purchased on line will be specific to a certain train, day, and time. You are not buying a ticket to jump on any train going in the right direction. For Spain you can buy a senior card at any train station for 5 Euro which will give a 40% weekday, 25% weekend discount on any ticket you purchase at the station. So you might consider not buying your Spain tickets in advance. Some of the advance sale tickets MAY have a deeper discount. Not always.

For Spain - renfe.com
For France - sncf.com

No comment on the French system since I am not overly familiar with French trains.

We use to buy our European train tickets from Rail Europe but have found a much easier and cheaper way. Please go to www.seat61.com. This site was created to help with all train travel in the world. Take time to explore it. It suggest that US residents buy tickets using www.capitainetrain.com. When you use other European sites they will transfer you to Rail Europe. We will be buying from Capitaine for our fall trip.

Hope this helps you!

.....When you use other European sites they will transfer you to Rail Europe. ....

That is not accurate. Only the French site will send you to Rail Europe because they are part owners. If you use Spain, Italy, Germany, you will stay right there. If you want to stay on the French site, just tell them you are from England. Rail Europe is only for North Americans. There are exceptions but I would avoids using RE unless absolutely necessary and I cannot think of why that would be.

Capitaine is also a reseller of tickets. We have never had any problems using the national rail sites for each country. When you do, you will get the best ticket deals. It is possible that other resellers will match the price but the resellers have to make money somewhere so you look sharp.

Use France or Antarctica as your country. There is RailEuropeUK which may charge higher prices than the SNCF site. For years I had no problem with my American credit cards on SNCF but suddenly, my cards began to be declined and I switched to capitainetrain.com, which has the exact same prices and schedules as SNCF without the rerouting or the credit card agita. Many holders of American credit cards report that they are unable to complete their purchases on SNCF.

I knew that I could count on the RS forum peeps. Thanks for all the info and thanks to Frank for the suggestion regarding senior purchase in Spain. I will do that! Now, my search will begin for my trains.

Capitainetrain does not sell tickets within Spain, so plan to use Renfe or buy at stations.

For France, start with SNCF: http://en.voyages-sncf.com/en/. Choose France as your ticket collection country. If you can't print the tickets at home and don't have a chip and pin credit card, select "pick up at a French Station." You can also pick up at an SNCF Boutique (often closer to where you may be staying than the station is, and you take a number and get to sit until your number is called). If you do have a chip and pin card, you can pick up in a ticket machine.

If you can't get the SNCF site to work with your credit card (I haven't had a problem, but I haven't bought tickets from them in several years), use Capitaine Train: https://www.capitainetrain.com/en

For Spain, here's an extensive tutorial on using RENFE from TripAdvisor. In the tutorial are some other websites for these tickets; they can be a bit more expensive but easier to use: http://tinyurl.com/cu48wk5