Train travels - tips and travails

I notice that on the SNCF website, train times always contain the note "Doors close 2 minutes before departure time".

With so much careful planning in advance of our trip, you'd think we could travel without issues. Yet we're only human with circumstances like tummy troubles, lack of Uber availability, and slow hotel clerks which create circumstances that are beyond our control. As we do 99% of the time, my best advice is to leave early and then be prepared to wait patiently when the SCNF hiccups make your travel day delayed - which also happened to us. C'est la vie.

Goodness, you certainly had a big hiccup.

My husband is ready, glancing at his watch a half hour before I am ready. Then we walk fifteen minutes to the train station and still stand around waiting for 20 minutes. After reading your adventure, I'll never complain about being early again! That had to have been absolutely awful.

Tip: there is an indication on every platform showing the makeup of the next train. The platform has hanging signs marked A-Z. The indication will show under which letter you wait for each train car. If 1st is cars 1,2,3 it may indicate to wait under A or Z or N etc. That way you don't have to run the length of the platform when you are standing in the wrong place.

"I notice that on the SNCF website, train times awlays contain the note "Doors close 2 minutes before departure time".

Yes. And they even put that up for trains where that is not the case. It is one of the ways in which SNCF works hard at being the worst railway in Europe...

Note that regarding the lounges: I have a SNCF "Carte Grand Voyageur", and in theory can use the lounges. I however rarely do so, as I normally plan to be at the station about 10 minutes before departure, and then just head for the train. At many stations they nowadays do scan your tickets before boarding (which is a terrible trend I see elsewhere as well). And it is true that tickets are often not checked on board. But that is one advantage of having compulsory reservation. A conductor only needs to look at a seating plan, and if that matches what he sees he know that the number of passengers is equal to the humber of tickets sold and all is fine. I know of movie theatres that work on the same principle, and do not check tickets either.

We took the Thalys to Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago and took a cab from the place we stay in the Butte aux Cailles to Gare du Nord. I got the advice of the cab company and booked conservatively; we barely made the train. It was pouring rain the usual 30 minute trip to the train station took almost an hour and the train itself is very very long and we had the very last car at the front of the train which meant walking past the many cars going to Brussels and then all of the cars going to Amsterdam until we landed at the last car before the locomotive. If it is late, just jump on the train anywhere and thread your way up inside -- this is not pleasant but beats being left on the quai.

All this was a breeze compared to our experiences trying to go from Amsterdam to Berlin with a threatened strike. I ended up having to buy 3 sets of seat reservations as the strike got called and various changes were made -- we finally did manage to get a train but it was dicey up to the end. I could have waited but I wanted to make sure we would get there as the trains were filling up as trains got cancelled and all the buses were sold out. IN Germany you can use
your ticket on any train given these circumstances but you won't necessarily have a seat. An an old lady the prospect of not having a seat for a 5/6 hour trip was daunting so I made reservations on future trains just in case. The original train didn't go and we found that out that morning, but I was able to get a seat reservation on a slightly earlier train. FWIW the agent at the station in Amsterdam the night before insisted that my train was going to go -- it did -- it just didn't go to Hannover where I was to change to the train to Berlin, so I had to make that last minute switch that morning to a train on a different route, making the transfer at a different station. There was no one to guide us through this -- you have to be able to manage your travel when the unexpected occurs.

It all worked out in the end and for our first leg of the trip we ended up having a whole compartment to ourselves. The virtue of this became apparent on our second leg to Berlin when we were seated in front of a loud guy who decided to phone every friend he had to relieve his boredom and yammered banalities in our ears the whole way.

the SNCF app (plus the website) shows the makeup of your train on your ticket page, including the position of your car...

Good grief. I've never paid attention to it on the app. Thanks skunklet.

We had the number of the car, but no idea where that was until the station where a board on the platform showed the train make up and we saw it was the very furthest car - a long walk in pouring rain.