Train Tickets

I just completed a five country tour of Europe and the UK and purchased all the tickets online. For each one, I just scanned to get on the platform, when available, or presented to the conductor.
Evelyn

Thank you all!

If you are interested in the reason you don't need to time-stamp these tickets, it's because

• they are train specific; you have a reserved seat, the seat number is written on your ticket and you can't get on another train with that ticket

OR

• you have no reserved seat, so you are taking a Regionale train. Your online-tickets can be used on the chosen Regionale and on any other one making the same route within the following 4 hours. If you had got tickets locally the 4 hours period would start when you stamp your ticket. Yes, sometimes getting a Regionale ticket at any Trenitalia counter may be the best option to enjoy max flexibility.

In Germany, tickets that have to be validated (entwertet, or devalued, cancelled) are used on trains, like urban transit (U-Bahn, S-Bahn), where people get on/off frequently and there are no conductors to check tickets. On other (most) trains, conductors check tickets, and they don't have to be pre-validated.

Discounted, advance (online) purchase, "SparPreis" tickets are limited to travel on a particular train (date, time, train number) and obviously do not need to be "validated", because they are only good one time, whether you use them or not.

On the other hand, the Bahn sells online, Flexi and Flexi Plus tickets. Flexi tickets are valid for any like train that day; Flexi Plus tickets are valid the day before, the dated day, and the next two days. These tickets, again, are for trains where a conductor will check and punch your ticket. They are not date and time specific, but don't have to be validated.

Tickets sold online for regional trains are generally valid for the entire day, until cancelled by a conductor.

Regional passes, like the Bayern-Ticket, when sold online, are only valid for the date specified, which is why I wait until the day of use to purchase them at the station. There is no price advantage for advance purchasing regional passes.

Online tickets are usually printed on "letter sized" paper and would not fit into one of the machines used to cancel tickets at the station.

In Munich, tickets purchased at an automat in an S-Bahn station have the time printed on them and are only valid for a few hours. They are too wide to go in the ticket cancelling machines. Ticket purchase at a U-Bahn station are not time stamped, and have to be cancelled before boarding the conveyance. These tickets have "Hier entwerten" (cancel here) and arrows where the ticket is to be inserted into the machine.

However, the ticket "police" are seemingly everywhere in Germany

Some years ago, I was taking a "non-beginning" German course here in Denver. In the class was a young woman who had been an exchange student in Munich. She told us how students would cancel their tickets on the wrong side and then use them again by cancelling the correct side.

Several years later, I was riding an S-Bahn coming out of Munich. At one of the stations a guy got on all dressed in black. He reminded me of an NFL lineman - as wide as he was tall. Anyway, the guy went around the car checking tickets. When he came to a teenage boy, the boy held out his ticket for the inspector to see. The inspector grabbed the boy's hand and turned the ticket over. He announced, "Überstampft" and proceeded to write the boy a ticket. I think he announced that the ticket was for 40€.

I guess the fare checkers know that trick.

However, I was on a "privatized" regional train on the left bank of the Rhein somewhere between Koblenz and Bingen. I was using an open ticket, one not requiring "validation". I think it had the date, but was valid for the whole day. When I got off the train, I realize that a conductor never came by to check and punch my ticket. I was actually shocked by that.

But the OP isn't going to Germany; only to Italy, as near as I can tell from their other posts, so should only be using the Trenitalia or Italo websites for ticketing, and only their validation rules apply That's unless planning to use one of the few smaller trains, like the Campania Express, which uses a specific site for advance tickets. Yes, Dario's info is spot on.

Validation of in-city public transit tickets - such as buses in Rome - is yet another topic.

I am indeed travelling to Italy in early September.

I appreciate your post Dario. In this instance I just wanted to have the train booked and the seat reserved. I hate a schmozzle for seats and hate facing the opposite way the train is travelling.

Also, was shocked there were no water taxis available for early September and that spooked me a bit. I’m travelling from Venice to Florence and then returning several days later.

Where do you see no water taxis available?
Hard to believe

ChristineH on the site you linked in the other thread about water taxis.

Also, was shocked there were no water taxis available for early September and that spooked me a bit

They are not available in early September? I bet they don't accept bookings because of the 79th Venice Film Festival, not because they are sold out.

George, Scarlet and Brad may fill up all the speedboats, but they usually leave the trains to the rest of us. Even if the posh-bunch decided to travel around Italy by train. I am positive you can always find a seat on a train to Florence in September. After all there are tons of seats available tomorrow and this is the week of August 15 holiday.

Incidentally I'd love to see a Trenitalia conductor checking Scarlett's ticket!

Dario, that is quite possible, but it still spooked me.

the German train info is bonus coverage.

Just in case some future reader going to Germany ends up reading this thread with no particular reason?