We are traveling from CDG to Avignon and have our tickets and railpass. I notice the pass indicates a railway official must write the date and passport number on the pass. We do not want to miss the train by standing in a line. Can we do this instead of the official and where do we find this person? Thanks for the help.

Hi, I just picked up our railpasses but we haven't used them yet. I assume you have a Eurail pass?

From what I know, before boarding your first train in Europe, you must present your Eurail Pass and passport at a train station ticket window for validation, prior to boarding the train. You most definitely cannot do it yourself. And I also don't think a conductor on a train is allowed to do it either. After that, you have the freedom of unlimited travel all day according to the validity of your pass.

If you don't want to stand in line, then your travel agent can do this for you when buying the Pass. But I don't think its possible to change the dates of validity afterwards. So I guess you can get your agent to validate it just before you leave on your trip.

If you have a flexi or Selectpass, the only thing you would need to do is fill in the date box for the day you want to travel.

Go to www.eurail.com for more info. They have faq's etc that you can read through.

Your railpass is NOT validated when you get it: that is, the date on which the period of the pass starts is left vacant, so that you can (a) buy in advance, and then (b)travel to the country where the pass is to be used. You get the date inserted on your pass ON THE DAY THAT YOU START YOUR FIRST TRIP, so that utility period of the pass is maximized. Obviously, to avoid fraud, this must be done by an authorized official. Anyone behind the window of a ticket office in a railway station is such a person.

Surely one of the great pleasures of travelling is being able to savour standing in line, having that chance to enjoy unhurried conversation with fellow travellers. If you really are so very worried that a few minutes waiting in line at Paris' CDG station could wreck your trip, one really has to ask what is the point of travel at all. Some of my best travel experiences have been standing in lines!
Nicky
www.hiddeneurope.co.uk

I do not believe a pass can be validated by a travel agent, in advance, or otherwise. After the start and end dates and the passport numbers are entered the pass must be stamped with a railroad stamp (which are not in the possession of travel agents).

You need to build the time it will take to get this done into your travel plans.

Intrepid1, I was sure that a travel agent wasn't authorized to validate a pass either until I read that they could on the official eurail.com site.

If you go to eurail.com and click on travel information/hints for travel/how to use your pass, this is what it says:

"Your pass needs to be validated

You should always have your pass validated prior to your first train trip in Europe. This means, that the first day and last day of validity have to be filled in prior to your first train trip. Furthermore the box ' Validating Stamp' needs to be stamped.

You can validate your Pass in two ways:

Your travel agent can do this for you when buying the Pass. Please note that it is not possible to change the dates of validity afterwards.

After arrival in Europe, a Railway official at a ticket window has to stamp your Pass and will fill in the first and last date of validity on your Pass.

It is not possible to validate the Pass yourself."


I hadn't heard this anywhere else before I read that.

OK...I guess we are dealing with semantics.


MY POINT is that you must have the pass stamped by a railroad official prior to its first use. To my way of thinking, this is a necessary part of the "validation" process

They are saying you can have a travel agent "validate" it in advance and then say you still need that railroad stamp to use the pass.

I cannot see how you can say a pass is "validated" without the stamp so IMO the information on Eurail.com is misleading at best.

Hi F,

Did you enter your itinerary at www.railsaver.com and click "only if it saves money"?

If it turns out that a railpass is not the cheapest way to go, you can return it with about a 15% penalty.

If you decide to keep it, you will have to have it validated at the first train station before you use it.

Ask at any ticket window. Do not be surprised if you are sent to another ticket window.

If you miss the train which you have planned on, there will be another one.

Schedules for Airport Charles de Gaulle to Avignon are at
http://plannerint.b-rail.be/bin/quer...n?L=profi&

Another note of interest to EuroStar/Eurailpass users.

We used our Eurailpasses to qualify for the London/Paris passholder discount fares, both booked through a U.S. travel agent.

Although we had our passes validated at Waterloo before boarding the first train (EuroStar to Paris), this did NOT consume one "pass day" of travel. It merely started the 60-day period during which the passes would be valid.

"Surely one of the great pleasures of travelling is being able to savour standing in line" . . .

Surely you are kidding or being sarcastic, hiddeneurope. Kind of hard to tell, but I can't believe you are serious. Incidentally, Fancyh's concern was actually missing the train if the wait in line would be too long. Is missing trains another "great pleasure" of travel?

While some comments have been correct in saying that you can have the pass validated in advance of the day you are actually first using it, if I'm reading the post right, Fancyh is flying into CDG and immediately taking a train, so that doesn't really help much in this case.

This is not semantics.

The eurailpass.com site states clearly and unambiguously that either a ticket window or your travel agent can validate the pass. Here is the entire section quoted <i>verbatim</i>:

<b>Your pass needs to be validated

You should always have your pass validated prior to your first train trip in Europe. This means, that the first day and last day of validity have to be filled in prior to your first train trip. Furthermore the box 'Validating Stamp' needs to be stamped.
You can validate your Pass in two ways:

º <font color="blue">Your travel agent can do this for you</font> when buying the Pass. Please note that it is not possible to change the dates of validity afterwards.

[OR]

º After arrival in Europe, a Railway official at a ticket window has to stamp your Pass and will fill in the first and last date of validity on your Pass.

[AND]

º It is not possible to validate the Pass yourself.</b>

Our pass was validated when we got on the channel tunnel train and we stood in the same line we would have to stand in anyway to show our tickets. It took no extra time to do it. Once it's validated, you only have to have it available to show the offical on the train that comes around checking for tickets.

Hi Robe,


From http://www.raileurope.com/us/common/...conditions.htm

How to Validate and Use Your Pass:
1. Passes are to be validated within 6 months from the date of issue and prior to the first day of use. To validate your pass present your passport and your pass to a railway official in a railway ticket office (not the conductor) from the country in which it is valid. The railway official will enter the first and last date of validity on the pass. This must be done before boarding a train, bus, boat or renting a car for the first time. In most cases validity runs from midnight to midnight for the period shown on the pass but check individual passes/countries for variations. All services, rail, rental car, air travel and travel bonuses must he used within the validity of the accompanying rail pass.
2. Under no circumstances is the holder allowed to validate his or her own pass, nor should pass holders enter their own passport number. Tampering with or altering a pass renders the pass void and authorizes train staff to confiscate the pass and subjects passenger to a fine payable in local currency.
3. Passes are strictly nontransferable and are only valid for those whose name appears on the pass. Use by anyone other than those named will invalidate the pass and will result in a heavy fine in local currency and confiscation of the pass. It is compulsory to present passports to railway officials on request.

From http://www.eurailpass.com/
under FAQs

12.
How do I use my pass once I get to Europe?

Before boarding your first train in Europe, you must present your Eurail Pass and passport at a train station ticket window for validation, prior to boarding the train. This is only necessary the first time. After that, you have the freedom of unlimited travel all day according to the validity of your pass. If you have a flexi or Selectpass, the only thing you would need to do is fill in the date box for the day you want to travel.

The part under &quot;Travel Information&quot;, where it says

&quot;Your pass needs to be validated&quot;...

&quot;Your travel agent can do this for you when buying the Pass. Please note that it is not possible to change the dates of validity afterwards.

indicates to me that this means of validation must be used upon purchase of the RailPass from the TA, not at any TA after the Railpass has been issued.

Railpasses can be validated three ways:
1- The issuing agent - i.e. a travel agent who actually issues the passes in their office can do it - you need do nothing more in Europe - the pass is fully validated - but agents are aloof to do this because once validated the pass is not longer refundable and as accidents and terrorism do happen you may want to wait until you get to Europe and get ready for your first train trip to do so (unactivated passes can be refunded minus a 15% fee usually up to one year after issuance - six months in a few cases.
2- You can activate it in Europe at any train station of any country the pass is good in - if there is a Eurail Aid symbol over the line or Internatinal ticket window do so there - even small stations can do it however. The railway official will write your passport number on it then and write in the dates of validity - you should not do anything - let them write in the dates European style of writing figures more legible than ours.
3- If coming from a country not on your railpass you can then do it on the train as you enter that country - this is the only case the conductor can do it - otherwise to validate a pass on the train entails about a $50 fee one conductor told me (I had a pass pre-validated by my agent when i bought it and nevertheless the Dutch conductor claimed it wasn't validated - because the stamp my agent used wasn't quite in the place they put it when you activate it in Holland, in this case. I insisted my pass was already validated but he wouldn't buy it - but was nice enough, he said, not to fine me that 35 euros he said he could have - he told me to 'have it validated in Amsterdam when i get off the train' - i went to the Eurail Aid office at Schiphol train station and said it was already validated but she, agreeing with me that the conductor was wrong, said i'll just restamp it again with our stamp to make sure. In effect this is what conductors may do when coming from a non-railpass country - they may not have a validating ink stamp on board and tell you to do it at the next station.
After validation you must write the dates in in ink before boarding - if you are found without the dates entered you can be fined and assessed the cost of a regular ticket. One older American, an ex-GI who had fought in Germany, told me he hadn't written in the date and the German conductor not only scolded him, but wrote in the date and then, as a penalty, wrote in another date as well - penalizing him one day. I saw on this forum not long ago that one travel agent told the person not to write the date in until the conductor comes by as sometimes condcutors never will come by and they'll get a free day - very bad BAD advice!
Changing dates: Folks have been known to change dates - making a 7 into an 8 to use again the same box the next day - again illegal - in effect more and more conductors are date stamping with their punch the day of use so this can't be done. But on honor system trains where there are no condcutors, just spot checks, this may pass. I wouldn't do it though. I was fined once for changing dates - $50 even though i had not changed it - but it involved a night train and the conductor on the night train date stamped it for the date before midnight and then, according to the 7pm rule, i had entered the next day in the box - a few weeks later a Dutch condcutor scrutinized all my box dates checking for changed ones (not unusual - on more than one occasion i've seen special sleuth squads examine with a magnifying glass all tickets and passes looking not only for fraudulent passes and tickets but date chaning) and then fined me claiming i cheated. I again went to the Eurail Aid office and they sided with me and refunded the fine.
another problem with dates i heard from one person was that some water had dropped on one of her boxes, blurring the date and a French conductor fined her, claiming she had cheated.
Make sure you pen in working nice and clean when entering the date.
Last Sep i waited at least an hour in line at CDG airport train station ticket window to make a TGV reservation - the same line you must wait in to validate your pass - hopefully the line won't be so long when you do it.
And ther is a problem with passholders making mandatory reservations on TGV trains on the Paris/CDG-Avignon-Nice train line. I've heard from several reliable folks that they were told that there were no reservations available for passholders but they could buy regular tickets - there is apparently an allotment that is given to passholders on each train if they can sell tickets at regular fares - you may want to make your TGV reservation before going thru whoever sold you the pass - more than there but if you need to be on that train...
(If can't reserve to Avignon, try to Lyon - two trains hourly there and use non-TGV trains that don't require reservations to get to Avignon
The only official to be able to activate to my knowledge is at a ticket window - except in the case of coming in from a non-railpass country or if taking the Eurostar, where pass will be validated by Eurostar - to get passholder fare on Eurostar pass has to be valid for the overall time frame - two months for most flexipasses but you don't use a day of travel as noted above.

I can understand why it would be a lot easier to have it pre-validated rather than staying in line. YOu can stand in a long line at train stations to get a clerk. If the leeway is tight, I really would get it validated by the agent who sells it, if that is possible. There is a rail station at CDG, I don't understand that comment that you couldn't do it there.

It doesn't surprise me that it could be validated by the travel agent who sold it, as it's mainly a special marketing agreement rail pass, and they must have some arrangements with agents authorized to sell it. It doesn't use up a day any more than getting it validated at the ticket window uses a day. I've done that -- the day validation comes from when you get on the train and want to start using it. YOu have to write the day in ink and then the conductor will be checking that.

I don't remember rail stamps so don't know about that, but if they say an agent can do it, I would believe it. It might not work for a lot of people as it starts the validity time frame, but if you do that just before you go, it will work for most people.

Well,I certainly stand corrected in terms of not knowing that an issuing agent can validate a rail pass.

I always recommend carrying your passport when using a pass - this can be a problem however as hotels often want to keep them - sometimes may be required to keep them they say but i don't know about that. Anyway conductors, not real often, will demand to see your passport to check with the name on your pass - it's more of a problem with youths and younger folk as sometimes people sell their passes (which are strictly nontransferrable) or they may be using stolen passes. So on day trips try to get your passport from your hotel and once on the train have it handy in case you need to fish it out.

Indeed some passes MUST be pre-validated - these include specials RailEurope periodically offers - passes are thus nonrefundable when issued and activated upon issuance. Note if activating when issuing you can have any dates entered within six months of the issuing date.

Wow! I didn't expect so many comments so soon. Thank you all. I think we will just wait to see our guide who meets us and check with him. The time span between our arrival at CDG and the TGVis 2 hrs. If we only have carryon bags and are taken to the train by the guide, we hope the validation process will go smoothly, If not, a later train will have to do. After a long flight (7hrs),a later train would be tiring. Any comments on time-we shall be going in early Sept. Thanks

No wonder people are confused.

<b>1. Passes are to be validated within 6 months from the date of issue and <font color="blue">prior to the first day of use</font>. To validate your pass present your passport and your pass to a <font color="blue">railway official in a railway ticket office (not the conductor) from the country in which it is valid</font>.</b>

First of all: the pass must be validated prior to the first <i>use</i>, not <i>day of use</i>. Getting it validated on the same day as it is first used is perfectly acceptable. If the statement is taken literally, it means that you can't do that. I know, I know, that's not what they <u>meant</u>, but it is what they <u>said</u>.

Second, it is not necessary to have it validated by a railway official from the country in which it is valid. Ours were validated at Waterloo, but were not valid in the UK. The Eurostar people wanted them validated because we were traveling on a Passholder rate. We didn't actually travel on the pass until two days later.

If I had a tight train connection (BTW, planes have been known to land late), I wouldn't hesitate to have my pass validated by a TA before leaving home.