CanadianNit

Hey all!

Question for someone who knows. I've travelled by train in France before and just love it. I'm hopefully going again the first week in December and, just in case, have all of my train tickets successfully booked/paid for as of last week. BUT one, from Paris to Lille, I can't seem to book. I understand French, and it tells me that you can't book more than three months in advance...yet I was able to book all my other trips occurring before my journey to Lille with no problem! Why is it some train tickets you can buy four months in advance, and some you can't?

Just curious, and confused! Thanks in advance for any answers.

travelroo

My experience has been that they seem to load the trains into their booking system much like the airlines. They are probably not loaded yet. Just keep checking back.

kappa

> yet I was able to book all my other trips occurring before my journey to Lille with no problem!

3-month condition is general so I'm curious exactly what reservations you have been able to made. Have you not only got tickets for the trains that don't require seat reservation? Do they actually have car and seat numbers for the trains 4 months away? Thanks in advance for letting us know.

CanadianNit

Two of the four tickets I've successfully bought are "sans réservation", and the other two show assigned seat numbers. And two of the trips occur before the Paris - Lille journey. That's why I'm confused that the result of the Paris - Lille booking was, "Sorry, Charlie, come back in a month."

Anyone else experienced the same difficulty?

ira

Hi C,

From whom did you buy your tickets?

www.voyages-sncf.com generally permits bookings 90 days out, sometimes only 60.

No need to worry, no one else can buy the tickets either.

CanadianNit

I bought them directly from Voyages SNCF.

Christina

no, I haven't had a problem, but I've never tried to buy tickets four months in advance.

I wouldn't ever buy tickets in advance for trains that were sans reservation as there isn't any point to it at all. There are no reserved seats, so it's not like you won't get one. Also, if you bought that online, I guess that means you just paid for it, but you have to pick it up in person at a train station in France -- so doing it online in advance doesn't save you any time or anything.

A lot of train tickets in France that do not have reserved seats are valid for that particular run for a period of a couple months, so perhaps that's why you could do it so far ahead, because no schedule or date is really relevant.

I still didn't know that you could prepay for tickets four months in advance that were tickets where they didn't even allow reservations. I just tried one that I knew had no reserved seats, and it wouldn't allow it -- saying you can't do it more than 3 months in advance.

So which tickets did you prepay four months in advance?