I am trying to see if I can book and print my own tickets on the SNCF site. I see on DB Rail and SNCF a departure time of 12:30 pm on a Sunday from Paris to Amsterdam but when I try to select this time I only get a 10:30 option. I'm looking for March 23rd so within the 90 day limit. What is up with this? Also on the SNCF site there's an opportunity to see if you can print the ticket. I did this and it looked fine but the site said if the ticket did not have "SPECIMEN" printed diagonally across the image it is not valid. Mine did not. Does this mean on the "real" ticket?
Posted by
Minneapolis, MN, USA
8700 posts
Which version of the SNCF site did you use? I did a dummy booking on both the French version of the SNCF site and the English version of the Thalys site. I found a 12:25 departure for 23 March and a Librys fare of 105€. Printing the ticket is NOT an option for a Librys fare.
However, I could have booked Smilys tickets for Paris-Amsterdam on 23 March and Amsterdam-Paris on 24 March for a total fare of 70€. And I could have printed those tickets. Smilys tickets are only sold roundtrip, but they are cheaper than single (one-way) tickets. Book an arbitrary return and throw away the unused portion.
Posted by
in a train schedule...
267 posts
When I checked Die Bahn and la SNCF, it showed trains leaving at 12h25 and arriving at 16h36. I had no problems selecting the journey, but it did not give me the option to print because it was a normal fare ticket.
If la SNCF continues to malfunction, use Thalysinstead. The fares will be the same.
How did you print the ticket if you couldn't find it on the rail site?
Tickets printed at home must have the "BILLET SPECIMEN" in the background to be valid. Are you using the most current version of Adobe Reader? Have you printed other documents with watermarks before?