French Train Tickets

RailEurope is owned by, along with a few others, SNCF (French Rail). French Rail doesn't want their U.S. investment losing money, so they make you use (and pay for) Rail Europe's services, whether you need them or not. SNCF is the rail company. They sell tickets directly in Europe and online. Selling through their subsidiary in the U.S., with it's overhead, just adds a layer of expenses. You have to pay for that. Rail Europe will mail tickets to almost anywhere in the world, eg Pago Pago, but they won't mail them to No. America. We have to get our tickets from Rail Europe. Most travel agencies in the U.S. go to RailEurope for tickets because they are not well enough trained to use the other rail websites (the Bahn, SBB, etc) and they don't speak anything but English. SNCF is trying not to undercut them. RailEurope just adds a heavy layer of bureaucracy to the process, adding cost but not contributing much. French Rail should dismantle that bureaucracy and sell directly to the public like so many European rail companies (German Rail, Austrian Rail, Swiss Rail, and others) do.

If you speak/read a bit of French, you can use the direct site, sncf.com. It will save you a bundle. Google translate will help. Been there, done that last year in booking tickets from Nice to Paris.

Thanks Rocky, I just bought a roundtrip from Paris to Dijon from SCNF. That particular trip had e-tickets available. I did receive those via e-mail. All went well. I needed another round trip to Caen from Paris, that ticket on SCNF was only available via automatic ticket booth ( which I knew wa unavailable due to our (no-chip) credit cards) and via mail. I have a contact, a friends daughter who lives in Paris presently so I will order the tickets and have them posted to that address and she can mail them on to me. I hope that will work.

Hi Larry, I recently booked a nice low far on the tgv from paris to lausanne. There are several places that describe the way to do it ( i think in rick's books and somewhere else on this forum, seat-61, a well phrased good search should get you the info). Basically on the tgv-europe site you can that you are from GB, and then choose to print out your tickets at home, i.e. no shipping. There are some trips that do not offer print-at-home and I cannot remember what the rules are, but its worth a shot for your trip. For reference, I scored 2 tix from Paris to Laussane for 128 euros. Hope that helps,
Steve

If your trip involves a destination in Switzerland like the TGV from Paris to Geneva then you can use the super-simple Swiss Train Site www.sbb.ch I used SBB for my roundtrip Geneva-Paris TGV tickets and got a great price AND was able to print them at home. And since SBB doesn't care where I live I can even tell the truth and not have to lie. Why can't all European ticket websites be as user friendly as the Swiss?

Larry, I had no problems (nearly) purchasing that very ticket just now; it would allow me to print the ticket at home: http://www.tgv-europe.com/en/?DISTRIBUTED_COUNTRY=GB How do you like paying 1/2 price?!? **notice in the above address that your 'ticket collection country' is Great Britain...therefore, you don't get kicked back to RE. That's perfectly fine; I've done it that way, many others here have done it that way. They don't care.

Thanks for all your help. Tried the TGV website, used Mexico, New Zealand, Australia... got turned down a couple of times. But success was achieved by going through the French railsiteSCNF one ticket was an e-ticket the other I had mailed to a friends daughter who is working in Paris (as this was the only option) she'll forward the tickets to me. Thanks again to everyone who tried to help.

It's too bad you didn't get a chance to read all of the responses on your thread before purchasing your tickets... All's well that ends well, I suppose.