Multiple Train Stations in a City

It is kind of you to share your lesson and save someone else the trouble. I hope your trip was great.

This is true of many French cities, and annoyingly there is no convention for naming the main station! Sometimes it's Centre, sometimes it's Ville, sometimes it's some local landmark...
Off the top of my head, the main cases are:

• Nice: Ville (main), Saint-Augustin, Riquier
• Marseille: Saint-Charles (main), Blancarde
• Aix-en-Provence: Aix en Provence TGV (long-distance), Aix en Provence (local trains to Marseille)
• Montpellier: Saint-Roch (main), Sud de France (some TGV only)
• Nîmes: Nîmes (main), Pont-du-Gard (some TGV only)
• Avignon: Avignon Centre (local/regional), Avignon TGV
• Valence: Valence Ville (local/regional), Valence TGV
• Lyon: Part Dieu (main), Perrache (more central & used by TGV to/from Paris as well)
• Orléans: Les Aubrais, Orléans
• Tours: St Pierre des Corps (main TGV), Tours (regional & some TGV)
• Reims: Reims Ville (main), Champagne Ardenne (some TGV)
• Lille: Lille Flandres (regional and some TGV), Lille Europe (TGV & Eurostar)

Paris also has many stations but usually one destination = one choice of station.

Yes, it's a slow day at work.

Lol, Jonathan, I did this about 10 years ago in Rome heading to Florence. We went to Termini but the tickets (which I didn’t buy) were from Tiburtina. Almost the same, right? 🤣 We weren’t so lucky, though - had to pay up for a new ticket…..

My friend and I still use “Who knew there were 2 train stations in Rome?” as a catch phrase that makes us laugh a lot.

Interesting you mentioned this. Sometimes destination names are similar as well. I took the train today from Milano to Varenna with the end station being Ticino. They posted the train platform early so I was seated and watching the conductor on the platform direct people. At least half seemed to have tickets to Torino and were trying to board the Ticino bound train. (Completely different directions!!)

Glad your “lesson “ was inexpensive and didn’t take much time!!

Pam, the destination was "Tirano" and I can totally see people confusing Torino with Tirano 😅.

There is also Metz Ville.

For regional trains you do not need to buy tickets in advance. Just buy at the station, and the reduces the chance of buying a ticket originating at the wrong station...

Hahaha…Balso. Guess it’s a good thing I got here!! 😬😂

My friend and I still use “Who knew there were 2 train stations in Rome?” as a catch phrase that makes us laugh a lot.

Heh. "Who knew there were two train stations in Naples?"

More to the point, my HS train from Bologna stopped at Napoli Agrafola, not Napoli Centrale. My bad. 15€ for train between the two booked same day-- after my Business Class Quiet Zone tix from Bologna was only 47.90€ booked in advance!

LOL! Ok, Alan, I am forwarned!

We did exactly that in March and had to buy a supplement.

Portugal's Coimbra has Coimbra-B (Rick Steves says it's "B" for Big) and Coimbra-A, which is often just referred to as Coimbra. [Or is it the other way around?] Tricky! Hopefully I will end up at the correct station next week.

There are also two stations in Warsaw, not to mention Vienna and Budapest, which has more than 2.

There are two stations right here in NYC one of which is a terminal. I see many people at Grand Central wondering where the Amtrak platforms are. It’s been many years since Amtrak left from Grand Central Terminal for Penn Station.

I had to do the same thing in April. It’s easy to overlook those details, especially if you’ve never been there before. Thanks for raising awareness of this problem in Nice and elsewhere.

Many trip planners allow you to just mention the city when planning trips. For example on www.bahn.de when you start typing a plane name often a version in all capitals will come up. If you select that you get the most convenient main station for the trip you intend to do.

Eg. You can plan a trip from PARIS to LYON and the system will select the right stations for you.

The French planner has something similar, eg. you can select "Paris (all stations)" in the planner, so you do not have to know which of the mainline terminal for example the train to Rouen goes from. Trenitalia does something similar.

In many countries it does not matter much which station your ticket is to/from as multiple stations are often treated as one for pricing purposes. For example a ticket to Brussel is always good to/from any of the 20 odd stations in Brussel, and the same applies to Berlin or other major cities in Germany.

1 If the definition of a "Main Station" is one that it is a terminus station then I suspect many cities have multiple "Main Stations"
2 By that definition Budapest has 3 Main Stations; Budapest Keleti pályaudvar, Budapest Nyugati pályaudvar and Budapest-Déli pályaudvar
3 None of the three are interconnected by direct rail lines, so if you are departing or arriving into one and you want to get to the another you have to leave the station and get on the metro (actually in an hour or two and with one or two changes you can do it by train).
4 So, where ever you go, assume the same might be true and look close at your tickets.