My wife and I will be spending 3 weeks in southern France during the month of September.
We will be traveling by train from Toulouse to Collioure; from Collioure to Arles; and the Arles to
Paris. Which do you suggest using in order to book tickets - TRAINLINE or RAIL EUROPE?
Thank you for your advice; much appreciated!
Posted by
Central Connecticut, USA
1103 posts
Trainline costs less, and they allow you to select seats. I have also heard that Rail Europe sometimes does not offer complete itinerary options. We used Trainline to book a couple of trips recently. For the shorter trip we were able to retrieve our tickets at the train station using a special code. For the long trip on the TGV, Trainline gave us the option of printing tickets at home.
Posted by
Basel, Switzerland
8889 posts
1) https://www.trainline.eu/
2) https://loco2.com/
3) https://en.oui.sncf/en/
- SNCF is the French National rail company, which runs most of the trains (= Société nationale des chemins de fer français), however their site is not the most user friendly.
- Trainline and Loco2 are two Europe based ticket sites that sell tickets for all trains at the same price as the railway companies (no markups). They are easier to use and (allegedly) work better than SNCF with non-European credit cards.
- Rail Europe is a reseller in North America. Their website is designed to be North-American friendly (times in am/pm, back-to-front dates, place names in English and prices in US$), but they do not sell tickets for all trains, and the ones that they do sell often have mark-ups. AVOID
For lots more independent information about French trains, see here: https://www.seat61.com/France-trains.htm
Posted by
Knoxville, TN, USA
7209 posts
By all means choose Trainline if at all possible.
Posted by
Pleasant Hill, CA, USA
473 posts
Another vote for Trainline 👍
Posted by
San Francisco Bay Area
5697 posts
I have usually used sncf -- not crazy about third-party sellers -- but have also used trainline with no problems. RailEurope ONCE, realized later I had overpaid.
Posted by
Long Beach, California, USA
3398 posts
Trainline is extremely easy to use. Pick your seats and buy your tickets. Once you have your tickets purchased you can download their app and just have your tickets on your phone as a QR code.
Posted by
Halton, Ontario, Canada
208 posts
I prefer loco2 myself, as when we went to purchase our tickets for this summer, they had them available before trainline. I also have the app which has all our reservation codes on it in one handy spot. Do a trial run through both and see which you prefer using. Their customer service is exceptional as well. Quick replies to questions and queries.
Posted by
New Jersey
26 posts
We recently used Trainline in the UK and in France. Both times it worked well.