Captain Train acquired
 

"Captain Train has been aquired by Trainline
Last week, we announced that we've been acquired by Trainline, our British equivalent. This is a huge achievement and it will bring us one step closer to providing the easiest and simplest product for anyone travelling by train in Europe. Will this change anything? Well, we don't think so and certainly don't hope so. We have our single ambition of selling train tickets, so we'll be continuing on this track!"


"SNCF's second summer sale starts on March 31st
Next Thursday morning, SNCF will be releasing a huge amount of tickets to all of their destinations in France. This sale for the upcoming summer will include tickets for travel between the 1st of July and 28th of August.

The first part of the summer sale started on the 2nd of February and included a handful of destinations in the south of France. So this Thursday morning marks the release of all other remaining destinations and tickets. And if you're not sure whether this sale will also include your tickets, you can find more information here.

As per usual, the cheapest tickets will disperse and evaporate once they've been released into the wild, around six in the morning (French time). If you have an alarm, use it wisely to harvest some big savings. Luckily you've already added all of your fellow passengers to your account, so you'll only have to enter your destinations and you'll be booked in no time."

I always thought that was a funny name, wonder how they picked it--and then they changed it to English, also later one for some reason (Captain Train).

But I don't think anyone cares unless fees change or other issues. FOr instance, I see on the trainline website that they don't accept VISA credit cards, nor American Express, only Paypal and Mastercard. Now I don't care about the Amex too much but on some websites in Europe, Amex will go through but not Visa or MC (for American cards, anyway, I've had that problem in Mexico, also). And Paypal has a foreign transaction fee you can't escape regardless of which card you use. That's not the most important thing if trying to get a few rail tickets for your trip, of course. And Trainline says they add on 2 pct if you use a credit card, also, but not Paypal. So I guess that evens out whichever you choose.

I see trainline has a booking fee although not too bad (about 1 GBP), I don't recall if Captaintrain does or not, but I don't think it does. And Captaintrain accepts Visa, also, and doesn't charge you a fee for using a credit card as far as I know.

But maybe they are telling the truth that it won't change anything.

The Capitainetrain was angel investor funded, and this is usually an expected outcome of an exit strategy.

I would like to see other viable private competitions. I see that Trainline has been acquiring other companies before the Capitainetrain. At some point, they can dictate the private part of the market and unless national railroads respond with competitive online sites, they can dictate the pricing schemes for those who cannot use national railroad sites to make purchases. I have not seen market consolidations benefiting the consumers in the long term.

I bought a ticket 3 days ago and used my Visa; need to wait until next Tues. to book my return ticket; and now I can't use my Visa for this? :(

Just saw that Trainline does not have great reviews among its UK users; just when we were all getting used to the convenience of Capitainetrain and loving it.

For French rail tickets, I have always used SNCF, not Capitainetrain, so it makes little difference to me. This will possibly be a PITA for folks who don't read European languages or have a European credit card, though.

I will not be using Trainline, and I take trains in Europe frequently.

>>need to wait until next Tues. to book my return ticket; and now I can't use my Visa for this? :( <<

You can still use your visa, just via PayPal

You can pay with visa on Trainline. Not sure where Christina got the information you can only pay with mastercard or paypal. Not sure about amex though.