Please help me understand the Corail Intercities tickets I just purchased.
 

I just bought two round trip tickets from Paris to Troyes for May 26th. I chose the print at home option.

On the Corail intercities trains, am I correct in understanding that I now have two guaranteed seats on a specific train but I will not have a reserved seat on that train. I was never presented the option to choose a seat. When I look at my ticket confirmation on SNCF it just tells me the seats are sens de la marche---in the direction of travel. Is this the type of train that does not offer reserved seating or did I miss something in the ticketing process?

Will I have to validate these printed at home tickets at the station or do I just show them to the conductor like the TGV tickets I've always pre-printed ?

thank you for helping me understand these tickets, Deborah

There is usually little need to pre purchase these types of tickets as only TGVs have assigned seating (some Téoz trains require pre purchase tickets but have no assigned seats).

All tickets should be validated when accessing the quai.

<<am I correct in understanding that I now have two guaranteed seats on a specific train but I will not have a reserved seat on that train.>>

Yes.

Don't know about the validation. You definitely don't have to validate PREM tickets that you print out at home, but you don't have a PREM, and I've never pre-purchased any other kind of print-at-home ticket. I can't quite imagine trying to slide an 8.5 X 11 sheet of paper into the composteur.

St. Cirq, that's what I was thinking about trying to validate the tickets.

Sarastro, I wasn't sure about the need to pre purchase but I wanted to do as much of the pre-payment as I can before I leave and the ticket prices were shown just like TGV, displaying only a few tickets left at this price, etc.

thanks, Deborah

Deborah, in case you don't read French, if you can direct me to the URL where you made the purchase, I can see if there's anything there that would explain the procedure. I'm kind of curious, myself.

StCirq, these are called Premium tickets that I purchased on the SNCF site. I just looked at the "additional help with printing" and they look similar to the TGV tickets I've printed in the past. It appears I will pay less for the tickets by purchasing them now rather than waiting until we get to Paris.

If they have the date and a train number on the tickets I guess there would no need to validate???

thanks for any help, Deborah

http://tinyurl.com/dhzphs


thanks StCirq, I put this into a short url, hope it works

Deborah

Hi DA,

Your link explains how to print the ticket at home.

When you purchased your ticket, the link to choosing your seat says, "Pas de placement disponible". You can't choose a seat.

You do not have to stamp your printed-at-home PREMS ticket.

Get on the train early and choose the best available seat.

Have a nice trip.

((I))

Well, it certainly looks exactly like a PREM ticket (and isn't PREM short for Premium?). I'm guessing you can now get nonrefundable, nonexchangeable Corail tickets on line, too, and that they don't have to be composted. But hey, don't trust me because I've never seen this before.

Ira, I just wanted to show that the tickets were going to look like the TGV ones that I have not had to validate in the past.

Thanks for confirming that I don't have to validate these Corail printed tickets.

Deborah