Rail transportation options - Europe trip October 2019

Congratulations on making it 30 years!

If I were you, I would go to loco2.com and buy my tickets there.

Have a great trip

https://loco2.com/.

The routes usually go on sale between 3 to 4 months in advance only.
For London to Paris or Amsterdam
https://www.eurostar.com/us-en/?
For Paris to Amsterdam
https://www.thalys.com/choose-your-language-and-your-country
For Paris to Basel
https://en.oui.sncf/en/tgv

You might want to fly Amsterdam to Basel. You could book that flight now.
For Swiss Rail you can use
https://www.sbb.ch/en/buying/pages/fahrplan/fahrplan.xhtml

or
London to Amsterdam to Paris to Basel all by rail

I assume that you will arrive in London 20 October. This day will be lost to jet lag. The 2 November will just be heading to the airport. Therefore, you have 12 days in play and you want to cover 6 locations in 4 countries? Unless you want to spend most of your time in transit, I would suggest that you reduce the number of destinations that you visit.

London and Paris are both rushed in 5 full days and Amsterdam in 3 full days. You will lose half a day each time you change location. I suggest that you drop Switzerland or London or Paris.

Eurostar tickets from London to Amsterdam will go on sale 6 months in advance.

Easy, doing it in the order you said. I am listing info pages from the "Man in Seat 61" website, which gives you lots of info and links to where to buy tickets.

• London to Amsterdam: https://www.seat61.com/Netherlands.htm#by%20Eurostar
• Amsterdam to Paris, Info plus where to book: https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Amsterdam.htm#Amsterdam-Paris
• Paris to Basel: https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Paris.htm#Paris-Switzerland
• Within Switzerland (Basel to Luzern and Luzern to Zürich airport), just buy tickets on the day form the station. No discount for advance purchase. Times and prices on the SBB website: https://www.sbb.ch/en

Thank you all for the great responses. Will a Eurorail Global pass for 15 days give me access to all high speed rail lines that we need? Will an up charge be needed at add the high speed lines? We definitely want to explore outside of major cities listed via rail as well- Liverpool, Champagne & Bordeaux regions of France.

Will a Eurorail Global pass for 15 days give me access to all high speed rail lines that we need? Will an up charge be needed at add the high speed lines?

All the high speed trains on your list (London-Amsterdam, Amsterdam-Paris and Paris-Basel) require a surcharge to be paid by Eurail pass users. This surcharge must be bought in advance and can, in some cases, be nearly as much as the cheapest tickets bought in advance.
Before you buy a pass, I strongly recommend you to price up advance purchased tickets and it is likely this will be cheaper. use the links I gave you above.

We definitely want to explore outside of major cities listed via rail as well- Liverpool, Champagne & Bordeaux

These need to be included in your budget. They also need to be included in your route planning. Liverpool is too far from London for a day trip, requires overnight. Champagne is also. This is a rural region. If you are just visiting towns like Reims you can do it by train. But it is not on your route Paris - Basel. Visiting the wine villages needs a car.
Bordeaux is totally the opposite end of France.
If these are to be included, your route needs re-working.

I've just looked at your dates-Saturday 19th October to Saturday 2nd November. Exactly 2 weeks.
"JFK in NY to London on Saturday, October 19, 2019." - does that mean you land on Sunday 20th? Not even 2 weeks, 13 nights.

London - 5 nights is a good time, minimum 3 nights.
Amsterdam - same
Paris - same
Luzern - minimum 2 nights.
4+4+3+2=13

Sorry, you don't have time for those extra places. :-)

We will probably eliminate Amsterdam & Liverpool from our itinerary. Would it make sense to join a group tour even if we are arranging our hotel stays? Would all of the transfers & transportation be included?

This trip was way too rushed before you mentioned the extra places you want to see in your last [sorry--second] post. If you want to see some smaller spots as well as major cities (which is a fine idea), you need to limit your trip to one or at most two countries. Please re-think this. You are not going to have a very pleasant trip at this pace. You will be leaving every stop, thinking "I wish I had two more days."

Alternatively, add more time. Most itinerary issues can be fixed if enough days can be added to the trip.

Truly, you have only 12 really usable days before you start moving around. Every time you change hotels, you reduce a usable day to a few usable hours.

I would consider flying to Amsterdam from London City Airport. At least check the timing and price. Now that there are a couple of direct Eurostars to Amsterdam a day, it changes the calculations. 5 hours would be competitive with flying.

if you are ready to book hotels, then there is no reason not to buy nonrefundable train tickets once that is done. Save a ton over Eurail Pass, since you are likely to have almost 100 EUR per person reservation fees to pay for on top of the pass cost.