So i am using the rail planner app to book my trains and keep track off the ones i wanna catch, but I don’t understand if the time that appears in the app is the local time of the countries. For example i am booking a train from portugal to spain, the departure time and arrival are in what timezone in this case ? Because they have a 1h time zone difference so if i leave portugal at 4 and catch a 2h train i arrive in spain at 6 portugal time but 7 spain local time. How should i book the trains ? Should I look at the time from the departure countries time zone or the destination.
Solved
Local time
Best answer by AnnaB
The train tables show local time for the station in question so you don't need to think about that.
Please note that the Interrail/Eurail travel day uses CET. A travel day is 00.00-23.59 CET.
Do NOT trust app-it has too many faults. Plus that for PT and ES it will not work at all to make RES-read overveiw-as for ES/RENFE need to do when there-or with luck also from CP in Lisboa (please report back if you succeeded in this).
Normally all planners will give time of country you are in for times of when trains/comboios arr and dep. You think way too much here.
Thats why-in old style printed timetables, you will see that the 10 min ride from last CP/PT estacao till 1st RENFE/ES estacion takes 70 mins-and reverse -50.
The train tables show local time for the station in question so you don't need to think about that.
Please note that the Interrail/Eurail travel day uses CET. A travel day is 00.00-23.59 CET.
Thank you, the app really is confusing and the trains are a mess in so many countries. I tried to find night trains and they all disappeared in the last couple of years. In Portugal I hope i have some luck since i have been warned that CP fails a lot.
Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days.
Planning
The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries.
Reservations
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website. You can look at the guide in the link:
https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105
If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.
Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.
Activation of pass
During the activation process, when you choose the start day of the validity of the pass, the first day of the validity period is automatically made a travel day, even if you don't enter a journey, the advice is therefore not to activate the pass before the first travel day as you only can deactivate the pass before 00.00 on the day the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you will loose travel days if you have activated the pass in advance.
It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.
Activation of travel day
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass, until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.
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