Afternoon everyone,
Wow... missed a busy thread here, and it touches on a lot of personal experiences which I hope could be useful. I'll deal with European rail travel first...
If you can buy your tickets well in advance, and commit to specific trains with non-changeable or non-refundable tickets, point-to-point train tickets always work out better value than rail passes. If you're planning to structure your trip on the fly, walking up and taking the next train, then a rail pass is better.
Here some useful links for everyone. In the case of the French and German websites, although I've just shown their basic web addresses, I've linked you here directly to the English versions of their homepages.
European rail travel can seem fantastically complicated to Amtrak and VIA, so a good place to start is:
www.seat61.com Designed and run by a very well informed and well travelled ex-employee of British Rail, this site is specifically designed to help British travellers plan trips from the UK to mainland Europe. As such it's structured to tell you about routings from London, but it's a brilliant way to find out connections and also which websites to book specific trains with. When planning a trip it's always worth checking the cost of tickets on the individual trains you are planning to take, as special discounted point-to-point fares may be available when booked on their own, rather than as a longer connection.
RailEurope in London have already been mentioned, and they can book most travel from the UK to Europe. They don't, however, have access to the special fares that are offered on some trains.
www.eurostar.com for London - Paris and Brussels. Round trips are usually cheaper than one ways, so for one way travel just buy a return and ditch the return ticket. Onward connections to other European destinations are available, but it's usually best to just buy your Eurostar travel here, and then your connections through the following site.....
www.voyagessncf.fr Voyages SNCF ('SNCF Travel') handles the sale of tickets for all rail travel in France, as well as virtually all European journeys originating in France... great if you're travelling through the Channel Tunnel from the UK to Europe. They also book hotels, flights, cars etc.
www.idtgv.fr Although Voyages SNCF (above) sell tickets for the super-fast TGV, this website is for the discounted idTGV trains... these are dedicated low-cost TGV services that are only bookable online. Instead of the usual first and second class division in accomodations, they offer 'idZen' (quiet coach) and 'idZap' (family / noisy coach). Best value for point to point travel on high speed TGV services.
www.diebahn.de for all travel in Germany. The travel timetable can work out virually any connection in Europe.
As I said above, if you're travelling internationally, you usually get the best fare buying your trip in segments. So for example, when I travel to my European partner university in France, I would buy train travel as follows:
1) Sheffield (UK) to London directly from midlandmainline.com (from £5 one way)
2) London to Paris from eurostar.com (from £49 student)
3) Paris to Strasbourg from voyagessncf.fr (from €20 one way)
However I recommend you read the info on seat61.com (see above) to get the personalised recommendations for purchasing your itinerary.
I'll post my thoughts about rail travel in GB separately.
*j* :blink: