Why doesn't my rail pass work for every train?
Rail passes often exclude key routes or require a separate booking tool with severely limited availability after purchase. This leaves travelers forced to buy individual tickets anyway, making the expensive pass more costly and less practical than paying as you go.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Buying individual tickets separatelyDid this help you?
- 2Visiting a physical railway station office to request a refund or clarificationDid this help you?
- 3Doing the math and comparing individual ticket prices prior to purchasing a passDid this help you?
- 4Buying a standard adult transit card instead of a visitor-specific cardDid this help you?
- 5Ordering cards online prior to travelDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Turns out there's nothing available or it's not part of the service for Florence to Monterosso or Milan to MXP and I have to buy those separately??”source ↗
“Very frustrated right now cause that pass was $$$ and technically since my travel is so long, the 7 day pass would expire. But I think it would have been cheaper to just buy all them separately.”source ↗
“My annoyance is that I had searched their main website for trains and options came up. But after buying the pass you are routed to a Pass -Search option and nothing is listed there. >><”source ↗
“Immediately in Cork the card declined on a bus.”source ↗
Where this came up
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