Eurail Select Pass & Swiss Rail Pass

Kim, a couple of things to be aware of. 1) In France, you will pay a supplemental fee on the French TGVs of 9Euro. Also, the French limits their seats on the TGVs for Eurail passholders. Should you encounter a TGV run where the limited seats are gone, you will either pay full fare or you will wait for a train with an available opening for Eurail passholders. Just make your reservations early to make sure that you get one of the limited seats. In Switzerland, you are fine until you get to Interlaken Ost. As you travel into Lauterbrunnen and the other towns in the valley (Wengen, Gimmelwald, Muerren and the two mountain tops, your Eurail pass will only cover 25% of the fare to and from these locations. The Jungfraubahn and Schilthornbahn are private systems within the Swiss rail system.

Kim, you don't need to be overly concerned, just aware. The rail pass does not cover "private lines" like the Mt. Pilutus round trip, the Brig/Visp train to Zermatt, the cog train up from Zermatt. However, with the rail pass you get a substantial discount, up to 50 percent. I found this out last year when we were riding from Brig to Zermatt, in first class, with our rail pass. When the conductor came along I happily gave him the pass and he shook his head and said we had a problem. He was very nice about it and explained the pass only gave a discount, did not cover the full fare on the privalte line. it should cover the majority of your train trips, plus boat trips in Switerland on the many lakes. You can ask at the stations in switzerland and they should be able to tell you. Also, seems when we rode the TGV with our railpass we paid a reservation fee that depended on the route, time and day of travel. Some were pricier than others. We also learned that the number of seats set aside for railpass users on the TGV may be limited. Twice we had to change travel plans because we waited too long to book TGV seats and those alloted for rail pass users were already booked. To be safe make reservations as early as you safely can on the TGV line. Hopefully others can add to this. Have a great trip and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Hi, The Pass is only available in 1st class so if the date and departure time you want on a TGV, say going from Paris to Frankfurt, is limited (I've encountered this situation), you still have the option of riding in 2nd class, sometimes that works. The Pass will be accepted in 2nd class. If not, choose another dep. time on the same day, if possible, 1st or 2nd class. With the Pass you'll just pay for the seat reservation. The seat reservation 1st class Paris-Frankfurt on the TGV or ICE is 30 Euro.

We have already reserved the overnight train from Paris to Munich, so I'm not worrried about that, as the majority of our train travel is to be in Switzerland that was my concern. So, as I understand it, every time we leave or return to Wengen we will need to pay - but at a reduced fare? And our day trip to Mt. Pilutus will most likely not be covered under the Eurail pass as well. Thanks for helping clarify!

In general those "Eurail Passes" are not a great idea. Point to point tickets usually work better. And in Switzerland - some sort of Swiss Pass product ALWAYS is a good idea.