Hi all.
I am having a problem with reading railEurope train schedules. Is there anyway to determine if the train is a TGV or some other speedster? I try to do it by the times, but they all seem to be the same -- reagular trains and express.
Is there anything about the train number that indicates its type? Also if one has a Swiss/France rail saver pass, is the TGV covered? Thanks for any help.
shrink

Why not use the www.sncf.com site?
It is the source of the most reliable information. There are English captions.

Can't help you on the two-nation pass.
I have bought only Swiss Cards.

http://bahn.hafas.de/bin/query.exe/en
will give you as much detail as you want, including what type of train, intermediate stops, etc.

The Swiss site, www.sbb.ch is also another good source of rail timetables that offers English captions. It tells you up front and quickly if a train is a TGV or not.

Of course, once an international TGV leaves France, the G tends to fall out because the track infrastructure is not up to 300 kph speeds. Tunnels are another problem. In the Chunnel, the trains have to cut their speed. Otherwise the vacuum created by two trains passing in opposite directions would suck the windows out.

Ben Haines has for years recommended the Cook rail guide, but I have not found a copy where I live in any library, not even the university reference room.

Maybe there is something different about the particular trains you were looking at, but every time I've viewed Raileurope schedules, they very clearly mark the type of train. TGVs are notated as such, for example. I don't know about the Swiss/France railpass, but I know the France railpass covers TGVs (you just need to make a reservation), so I suspect it does. Doesn't the Raileurope website tell you about that?

I looked at RE and the information did NOT tell me if a train from Paris to Lyon was a TGV or not. I happen to know that it is, but the RE site did not tell me that information.

Prices are very high at RE. I priced the train from Zürich to Geneva. The RE price was $77, plus $10 to ship the ticket.
The SBB price was 77 chf.

At the current rate of exchange, the Swiss ticket is about $63. The rE ticket is 46% more expensive after adding in the shipping cost, which is mandatory.

Yes, the passes cover travel on TGVs but you have to pay extra for the seat reservations.

They've apparently changed the Raileurope site recently that it doesn't show times and routes the same way. They also seem to be pushing railpasses for some reason, as it was very difficult for me to find out how to find regular train schedules on there, rather than passes.

However, perhaps I'm lucky, but they do show if a train is a TGV on the page I just viewed, including routes from Paris to Lyon. You just have to click on the "select fare" to see the details, and it tells you.

>They also seem to be pushing railpasses for some reason,...<

The reason is that that is what they are in business to do.