Price track point-to-point train tickets?

Most European rail companies have standard fares, set yearly; but then offer a limited number of discounted (often non-refundable) fares.
Once those discounted fares are sold, that's it, there are no more, so don't worry about the price ever dropping lower after they are gone.

I know for certain the SNCF (France) website allows you to sign up to receive an a alert when a certain route goes on sale. The high speed rail tickets are the ones where the price starts low and goes higher the closer to the day you want to travel and those prices do not fluctuate. The regional train prices are set.

Also I have signed up with each national rail site and get alerts about special deals all the time

Train ticket prices do not change frequently as is typical of US airline prices. For example -- the there is only 3 levels of ticket pricing for Italian trains - Super Economy, Econ, and Base. When the SE and E tickets are limited in quantity and once sold are gone. So there is really is no need for tracking of rail tickets because the prices don't change. The one exception is that sometimes a train company might run some short term promotions but that is infrequent. The earlier you can buy a ticket gives the most opportunity to obtain a discount tickets. Just remember the discount tickets come with restrictions -- generally no refund or change.

Cheapest tickets will be farthest out and go up from there. There is no point in checking 60, 90, or 120 days. Just know that whatever they are 120 days from now, they will likely be higher 60 or 90 days later. They have a base price, which you would pay if you just walked up to the ticket window and bought a ticket for the net train. Then they allot a certain number of tickets for that train at a deep discount. When those are sold out, another certain number of tickets at a good discount, etc, until all the discounted tickets are sold. Then only base fare tickets are available.

Switzerland operates a little differently. You see the full fare rate out 120 days, then, beginning 30 days out, they will sell them at up to 50% off for nonrefundable, train specific tickets on select routes.

Once we purchased the tickets, will that price still fluctuate, like a plane ticket, so we might have bought the ticket when it wasn't the lowest price?

no

Not needed, as the others say, they don't fluctuate, and NEVER go down.
As a gross generalisation (every company is different and has its own rules):

• Short local trips are fixed price, usually the same very day. just buy on the day.
• Long distance trips have cheap advance purchase tickets, and expensive buy-on-the-day tickets. The cheap tickets sell out first, leaving only the expensive ones.

The excellent Seat61 website has a section on each country, giving the details for that country.

Keep in mind that if you plan to use a point to point discount ticket, "the "60, or 120 days in advance of travel date" obviously to get the lowest price, some detailed planning is needed as well as commitment since you're sacrificing flexibility.

I use both... the adv. purchase tickets too, buying them on-line, paying for them with the credit card, printing them at home, etc, basically locking myself in to that specific date and train departure time as well as the rail pass. Both depend on the particular journey, day or night, where and when. The prices do not fluctuate, only increases as time draws closer to the intended departure date.

So, if your itinerary includes going from Paris to Frankfurt, or vice versa, and you can commit to a specific date of departure, I recommend booking that ticket as early as permitted, it could be as low as 39 Euro.

Tickets are not usually available until around 90 days before your travel date.

Germany and Italy have gone to 6 months, Austria 5 months.

Even better with 5-6 months since I can start planning the Paris to Frankfurt and vice versa route to get the lowest 1st class seat, plus the various night train routes that OeBB carries out.

There is a website, railpass.com, which pretends to advise you whether to use a railpass, which they sell, or point-point tickets, which they don't sell. Guess what? Surprise, surprise - they usually recommend that you use a railpass.

Based on my previous uses of the website, they don't have a complete listing of stations, ie, they only recognize connections between major stations, and they don't recognize discounted, advance purchase tickets, which would make point-point tickets less expensive. So, they do not do a very comprehensive analysis.

In my experience, you can usually find lower fares if you use point-point tickets and regional passes, but you have to know how to find the lower cost tickets. In 2000, I used a rail pass and just barely made it pay; since then (10 trips), I have never found that a rail pass would pay.

Most countries that offer advance-purchase discounts make the full fare pretty easy to find at the same time, for comparison. On the German and Italian sites, they're always side-by-side. You can also see full fares at a glance using our maps.