France Rail Pass - Validate Seat Reservations?

These are two different things! The railpass needs to be validated at a manned ticket window. You present your railpass and you passport and thee clerk writes in your passport number and start and end day of your rail pass. This reqiures you to stand in line etc. The reservations (and tickets, if you use point to point tickets) just have to be stamped in the yellow boxes at platform entrance, this takes 2 seconds. I think, officially, that reservations alone do not need to be stamped, only real tickets, but I would stamp them anyway, just to be safe. It doesn't hurt!

Thanks - I have dealt with stamping my rail pass (my first time was in Prague and is a story in itself) but I have never had to actually have the reservations (in addition to the rail pass and required by some trains) stamped/validated...but I think I might have to for France so that's what I'm trying to confirm.

In France and Italy, tickets have to be stamped (composté) in the machines before boarding the train. It's no big deal, just put your ticket into the slot and the ticket is stamped with date and time, and a small corner is chopped off. Other countries don't have this requirements (and they don't have those machines). In France and Italy they do this to prevent people from getting refunds for tickets they have already used, but haven't been stamped by the conductor. You could hide away from the conductor (in the bathroom is a classical) to avoid ticketchecksand stamping, and claim a refund for the ticket claiming it was unused. Other countries have solved this by not alloving travelers to get tickets refunded after train departure.

Last September we travelled in France on TGV's using a two country rail pass. I validated our reservation card in the yellow machine at the entrance to the platform each time we travelled. Better to be sure than sorry.