Bob - could it really be &quot;stif&quot;, as in <i>Syndicat des transports d'&Icirc;le-de-France</i>...?
http://www.stif-idf.fr/

Like kerouac, we took the RER from St Lazare. I cant imagine anything easier. Go upstairs, never saw a line, just buy your tickets. The Versailles train is next to the ticket counter. Hop on and its 20ish minutes away

I'm making notes for next time. Of COURSE I would get the train that goes to the least convenient station....that is the kind of thing I do all the time. LOL

For travelnut. I think you got it.
The quote I gave you was a cut and paste, so stiff had the second f.

But stif would fit. I was a little slow on the trigger not to catch it.
A function of my atrocious French, probably.

luv2 - that's excellent, thanks for passing along. When we last purchased (2 years ago) they were only being sold at the gares. This will make it easier for the next trip!

Is it an RER from Saint Lazare or SNCF commuter train

not important unless someone were looking for RER signs - may be an RER but was not a few years ago when i took this train

St Cloud is right on the way and this stop near the St Cloud park, and this park offers a sweeping view over Paris as well as having some historic monumental fountains, etc.

From Saint Lazare or Montparnasse, it is just the normal commuter lines to Versailles without an RER label.

Of course the RER C to Versailles is also a commuter line, just organized a little differently.

and from St Lazare these trains have seemed especially dumpy to me but only took last two years ago

You can buy the Forfait Loisir ticket at an RER station, as I've done it a couple times. I last bought one at the Invalides RER station. Such RER stations usually have windows marked Transilien to buy those kind of tickets.

Also, SNCF actually runs the RER in many places, perhaps Seamus isn't aware of that. They run the entire C and E lines, for example. They run RER B from CDG to Gare du Nord, RER A from Nanterre to Poissy and they run most of line D. So maybe those are the ones where you can buy them, but that is a lot of the RER.