RailPass or not

Many of your journeys appear to be on high-speeds. Most countries will charge a supplement fee on top of your railpass to ride these trains. You wil find that if you book 90 days out on the French train website (www.voyages-sncf.com), you can get some really good P2Point discount fares. The French website is a bit tricky for U.S. citizens. If you put U.S.A. as your country, the site will switch you to RailEurope which you do not want. Select Great Britain instead. You will want to pick up your tickets in France. You can pick them up at any train station by showing the credit card you used to purchase and your ID.

While you are young enough for a three-country (Benelux-France-Switzerland) youth pass, you will likely be taking several rides on Thalys high-speed trains. For those trains you must pay a passholder fare which is a lot more expensive than a simple passholder seat reservation (required on French TGVs). If you buy a point-to-point ticket for a train that requires a seat reservation, the reservation comes with the ticket and is included in the price of the ticket. If you book well in advance (up to 90 days allowed) at www.thalys.com, you can get a Smoove fare as low as €25 for Brussels-Paris. When you go from Paris to the Hague you could get a €25 Smoove fare for Paris-Brussels and take an IC train from there to the Hague. Or you could get a Smoove fare of €35 for Paris-Rotterdam and take an IC train from there. You can get fares for those IC trains and for trains from the Hague to Amsterdam on the Dutch Rail site. You can get fares for travel in Belgium on the Belgian Rail site. (No seat reservations are possible and there are no discounts for advance purchase on any of those trains). If you book well in advance (up to three months allowed) at www.tgv-europe.com, you can get a Piccolo fare as low as €26.00 for direct Paris-Lausanne TGVs. To keep the site in English and to avoid being bumped to the Rail Europe site which doesn't offer discount fares, choose Great Britain as your country of residence. If allowed, you can print your own tickets. If that's not allowed, you can pick up your tickets at any SNCF station or boutique in France.

Andrew, it's an empirical question that you can only answer by costing out p2p vs. the pass. The answer will depend on which pass, when you would travel, and whether you qualify for a 2nd class pass (which can still be a pretty good deal, I think). Use the national rail services, not raileurope, to get P2P prices. If you buy a pass, I think you are safe making your reservations once you get to Europe, unless you absolutely must be on a particular train. If you buy tickets, and do so in advance to score discounts, you can buy reservations with them.

thanks... thats what i thought... I qualify for the youth rate (as i will be 24 at time of travel), but I just get overwhelmed researching it all. is there anythign wrong with claiming im buying p2p tix from great britain rather than US... I will continue to search the forum,

When you are comparing point to point to a railpass, the only valid source of point to point prices is the railroads' websites. Ricks map is just a rough guide and RailEurope prices are much higher than you would pay over there. For your travel in Benenux (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg), Paris, and between most of your travel will probably be by Thalys (they have a website, www.thalys.com). The Netherlands and Belgium also have official rail websites for less expensive trains. Too bad you are not traveling in or into Germany. They have a great website for fares and for ordering in advance.