We would like to take a train from BCN to Collioure. We're still thinking about renting a car. If we were to decide to go with a train, where can I find this info? I have a train schedule and I've been to the renfe website, but haven't been successful.

Is there another website I can go to? Will the spanish rail take me to France or just to the border? I was thinking of taking a train to Portbou, and then taking one from Port Bou to Collioure? Or BCN to Perpignan then to Collioure? Please help it's confusing! Thanks in advance!

http://www.sbb.ch/en/index.htm

Above is the Swiss Railways website but this gave me the answer to your question exactly. Try it.

We took a train from Barcelona to Perpignan, then picked up our car there and drove to Collioure. I remember having a hard time finding the train info, but I think I found it on the French train site: www.sncf.com. I would imagine there are trains from Perpignan to Collioure.

Thanks for the help! I will check both websites!

Like the other poster, wren, my husband and I took the train from Barcelona to Perpignan and rented a car there (in October 2003).

I recall going to the Barcelona train station the day before we left to purchase tickets and get familiar with the layout of the station. There are lots of trains running along that route and we didn't have any problems getting the tickets at the last minute.

Good luck,
Diane

I just went to www.sncf.com and plugged in a couple of random dates, and there are trains from both Barcelona stations to Collioure, connecting through Cerberes. It looks prerty straightforward.

Only two trains a day go thru the French-spanish border due to differences in track gauges - Spain having broad gauge and France standard gauge as most of Europe, except Portugal, Finland and Russia have. thus you nearly always have to change trains at the border - the Talgo trains that do go thru the border have moveable wheel bases so they can move the wheels in or out and thus run on both track gauges. These trains i believe do not stop at Collioure so you still have to change at the border (going to Perpignan is farther as you have to backtrack to get to Collioure, which is quite near the border and served by many trains. Commuter trains run frequently to the border from Barcelona but these can be cattle cars so try to hop express trains. You change at Cebere or Port Bou to French trains.

And easiest site to use to get train schedules for all of Europe is the German Rail website:
www.bahn.de - click on int'l guests bar at top to get English page for getting schedules.