I am traveling from Brussels to Amsterdam next month and I want to book my train ticket in advance so that I do not have to buy it at Brussels Midi (I am arriving at Brussels Midi on the Eurostar, so I will be booking an Antwerp-Amsterdam ticket as my Eurostar ticket will be good through to Antwerp).
Should I book my IC ticket through TGV Europe and have the ticket sent to a UK address or can I book it through SNCB b-rail.be and print the tickets at home? The reason I ask is that I noticed on the SNCB website that it says print at home tickets are only valid on the date purchased. I am not sure yet if I will be taking the 16:15 or 17:15 train and I don%26#39;t want to run into difficulties with print at home tickets.
Thanks!
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%26quot;I noticed on the SNCB website that it says print at home tickets are only valid on the date purchased.%26quot;
I meant to say that the tickets are only valid for the date purchased... I don%26#39;t want to have trouble with taking the train at a different time from what it is booked at. It sounds like paper tickets are good for any time, I wasn%26#39;t sure about the print at home ones.
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1) Your Eurostar ticket is %26quot;good through to Antwerp%26quot; provided that you leave for Antwerp within 24 hours of arriving in Brussels; if your Eurostar ticket is effectively for London-Antwerp, Brussels is just a transit stop which cannot exceed 24 hours, in either direction (or indeed both).
2) You would not in fact have to buy your Antwerp-Amsterdam IC ticket at Gare du Midi (incidentally there is a difference between BOOKING a seat, which I am not sure is even possible on an IC train, and purchasing a ticket in advance); you can buy it an any station with an international ticket desk - e.g. Nord, Central, Schuman, Luxembourg.
3) If print-at-home tickets are only valid on the date ON WHICH (and not FOR WHICH, as I would have expected) they are purchased, which I find most surprising, then clearly you cannot use this feature, even if this would make no difference with regard to the TIME of the train on the date in question! Usually you purchase an IC ticket FOR a specific date and can then take any train on that date, so it would not matter whether you wanted to be on the 16:15 or 17:15 train (do you mean 16:59 and 16:79, from Antwerp, or is it not a weekday?), as long as it was on the date shown on the ticket: this is linked to what I said about not being able to BOOK, i.e. reserve a specific seat on a specific IC train. However, I understand from other questions on here that people who don%26#39;t have a European credit card often find it difficult to buy from the B-Rail site at all, and in that case, you would have to buy it from an agency. But then I am not sure if you can use TGV-Europe as that site is for supposedly high-speed trains, so it will want to book you on Thalys rather than IC!
Maybe someone who has used a print-at-home B-Rail ticket purchased from outside Belgium will be able to advise. At all events, the one-way normal 2nd class IC fare from Antwerpen-Centraal to Amsterdam-Centraal is €28.80 (from Brussels, €34.80).
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Sorry I missed your additional information. You confirm what I suspected, which is that print-at-home tickets are valid FOR the date for which they are purchased, which is exactly the same for tickets purchased at the station: if you buy from a machine you have to specify the date of travel and the same if you buy from a clerk - if you don%26#39;t specify they will assume date of travel is the same as date of purchase.
Therefore irrespective of what type of ticket you have, it will always have a date of travel on it, and you can take any train from and to the same place (other than Thalys of course, for which you would have to reserve a seat) on the date shown on the ticket.
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Thanks for the information :) I will try to use the b-rail.be site and print the tickets at home, since it doesn%26#39;t sound like there is a difference between the tickets... If that won%26#39;t work I will try to TGV-europe site route.
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I don%26#39;t think you will be able to buy tickets online from the SNCB website. At least, when I buy a ticket online using my credit card, I need to introduce my pin code on an external device, the one that I use for PC banking. This is for security reasons.
As far as validity of the ticket is concerned, this is an extract from the SNCB website:
To travel on a traditional international train, you must always have a valid ticket.
A traditional international ticket can be purchased from 3 months prior to the anticipated travelling date. These tickets are valid for 2 months* from the validity date shown on the ticket and selected by the customer.
*Exceptions: Sparpreis tickets to Germany are valid for 1 month; Benelux Weekend is only valid for one specific weekend.
If you%26#39;d like to obtain information on travelling by rail inside the country or on international travel starting from or ending in Belgium, or if you%26#39;d like to book tickets for Eurostar, Thalys, TGV or the ICE Brussels-Frankfurt, call +32 (0)2 528 28 28!
A voice menu will enable you to select your language
(1 = Dutch, 2 = French, 3 = German, 4 = English).
You can then select the service you require:
1. TELESALES for INTERNATIONAL journeys by train
2. INFORMATION about INTERNATIONAL journeys by train
3. INFORMATION about DOMESTIC journeys by train (within Belgium)
4. OTHER services
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A couple more questions:
Is there a reason why there isn%26#39;t a 17:15 departure from Brussels (17:59 from Antwerp) showing on the SNCB site for Sunday, September 21? It is showing on all the other sites I checked.
Also, can you only purchase Benelux Youth tickets as print at home tickets or are these fares available at the station? One of the people traveling is a youth.
Thanks again!
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There is a 17:15 departure (Bruxelles Midi) to Amsterdam on the SNCB site. Oh well, I use the Dutch version (NMBS) but the database is the same.
Bruxelles Midi/Brussel Zuid 21.09.08
IC 9245 InterCity 17:15
Bruxelles Central 17:18 17:19
Brussel Noord 17:22 17:24
Mechelen 17:40 17:42
Antwerpen Centraal 17:57 17:59
Roosendaal(Gr) 18:25 18:25
Roosendaal 18:28 18:30
Dordrecht 18:53 18:54
Rotterdam Centraal 19:06 19:08
Den Haag HS 19:25 19:26
Schiphol (Airport) 19:49 19:51
Amsterdam Centraal 20:06
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Thanks, for some reason it didn%26#39;t show up in the booking options, but since a ticket is good for any train that day, it won%26#39;t make a difference!
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