European transportation in December - buy in advance?

"I have meticulously mapped out my route and have picked out the times of the trains I want to take on raileurope.com." That's your first mistake. RailEurope is not a good website for finding trains. They only show the trains for which they sell tickets, usually the most expensive trains between only popular destinations. The German Rail website, http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en, has far more complete schedules. Don't compound the mistake by buying tickets in advance from RailEurope, at least not without checking out other options. RailEurope is convenient, but you pay a high price for the convenience. Their ticket prices are generally higher than what you would pay at the counter over there. Additionally, some European railroads give big discounts vs counter prices when you advance purchase from them. For instance, you can probably get Sparschiene fares online from Austrian Rail, www.oebb.at, Prague to Vienna as low as €29 ($40) for 2nd class in a day train vs €59 $(82) for the same ticket at the counter. RE only sells a 1st cl sleeper on a night train for $280. In my opinion, the only good reason to buy tickets in advance is if you can get discount prices directly from the national railroads or if you have to have reservations. You probably don't need reservation for those trains, and if you want them, you can get them over there, maybe the day before, for less. I was on an ICE once that was SRO. It was the day after Christmas, a holiday. All of the seats were occupied, but over half were not reserved.

Amy, What Lee said! First of all, for the best information on train schedules, use the bahn.de website that he suggested, or the rail sites of the various countries (Trenitalia in Italy, SBB, etc.). Looking at your question from a logical perspective, if trains are "unreliable during the winter", tickets purchased in advance are definitely not the best method. If a particular "run" is cancelled due to weather (or whatever), the tickets will need to be changed (possibly at extra cost). A much better solution would be to purchase P-P tickets at the time, as you'll have a much better idea of local conditions (and any disruptions) once you're there. Happy travels!

In my experience, trains are no more or less reliable in winter than any other time of year. Except for mountain passes and rare blizzards, snow doesn't affect railroads nearly as much as auto traffic. The sort of mechanical and labour problems that most commonly cause delays can occur at any time of year.

Great info - thanks everyone! We will purchase within each country P-P...