Getting Rail Pass Reservations very close to travel dates

The only clue I can get as to where these legs are is your prior questions, and those were all about France.

In France you most definitely need to arrange pass holder reservations ASAP if you are intending to use TGV services. Those are the high speed trains which include the reservations for normal people buying ordinary point to point tickets.

Using TGV trains with a Eurail Pass can be quite difficult and complicated. While you think you buy the pass to make things less complicated, and are willing to way overpay for the trips for that convenience, actually in France it makes it much more complicated.

French railways charge a high price for these mandatory passholder reservations, and worst of all they ration them. There can be plenty of empty seats on a TGV but passholders are sometimes unable to buy reservations if all the passholder seats are gone. Then if you want to ride that train you need to buy a new full priced ticket to get on.

Advice in France is always to get those TGV reservations as soon as you can.

You say that you won't be anywhere long enough to see a member of staff and buy the reservations? I suggest that you make time. Any French station can help you, and SNCF have small sales counters elsewhere than the stations in the bigger towns and cities.

If you are talking about legs elsewhere can you say where, please?

Sounds like you need to call Rail Europe. Only Rail Europe can definitively tell you what this means.

Thank you to you both for your replies. I will call Rail Europe in the morning. We waited too long to make the reservations. It will be for Brussels and 2 spots in France. We won't be taking any of the high speed trains so that might make it a bit easier. We travel from Amsterdam to Brussels and there is an option of a route without reservations but once we start travelling from Belgium and into France, I see we definitely need reservations. Hopefully I can get Rail Europe to courier the reservations to our first hotel at the beginning of the trip. I'll call first thing.

Good luck calling Rail Europe.. I have finally gotten a straight answer from them about seat reservations I needed to cancel or change after many expensive phone calls from Europe. Upshot is I'm just out my money (was concerned about route interruptions because of the migrant crisis). Rail pass was a very expensive mistake. Never again.

We'll see how this trip goes but I'm sensing we should have gone with point to point tickets and added reservations where necessary....live and learn. I spoke with Rail Europe and they kindly made the reservations I needed by phone and have expedited the paperwork to us at our home address. We will receive in 2 days which is just great. Bon Voyage and thank you again.

cdmac - you wrote "we should have gone with point to point tickets and added reservations where necessary". But, if you buy what you call "point-to-point tickets" (i.e. normal tickets from A to B), these tickets include the reservation automatically if one is needed. if it is optional, it asks you when you buy the ticket.
You only need to worry about making reservations as a separate transaction if you buy one of these funny passes they sell to tourists.

You should be able to make any reservations you need at a rail station in Europe after you get there, but do it as soon as possible.

Hint: European don't come to the US to make reservations. Also, RailEurope is NT the best (least expensive) place to get reservations; they'll be cheaper over there.

Point to Point Tickets is almost ALWAYS the best alternative...especially when the alternative is dealing with Rail Europe and Eurail Passes - neither of which is useful.

But he says he already has a rail pass. I agree with you that he shouldn't have done it, but the question is, how does he get reservations to go with it.

read the post from the OP upthread.

they kindly made the reservations I needed by phone

The reservations have been made. The poster get their answer.