Welcome to today's thread - #CrossBorderRail 2026 Tour Day 06 - 3 Mar - Ravières - Paris - Lille - Orchies - Tournai - Bruxelles Midi - Almere
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I meanwhile wondered if SNCF Connect has finally put their problem of their lack of international booking right... so I tried Paris - Mainz
Type Mainz into DB and it gives you Mainz Hbf as the first option in the search
SNCF Connect calls Mainz Hbf "Mayence (Mainz)" but drops Hbf. Put Hbf and it gives you Hbf (Ersatzverkehr). What?
@jon In this case I think it's not entirely SNCFs fault as DB also uses the "Ersatzverkehr" name in their system for the bus stop. Which is a bit odd and regulary confuses some passengers.
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But weirdly it does give prices... and even sort of Sparpreis. But with €15 price difference.
Why?
How?
Oh and this is an interesting one
SNCF Connect *will* give me a 13 min connection in Mannheim, off the France-Germany ICE
DB will NOT give me that connection, I presume because they know that Dobrindt's illegal non- #Schengen compliant border controls will almost certainly mean the connection is missed in Mannheim. DB puts you on a later ICE in Frankfurt instead
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@jon And if you hit "continue" will DB actually offer you a ticket?
@f09fa681 Of course. Why would it not?
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And if you put Mainz and choose "Ville" from the list, not "Gare", it gives you routes to Mainz Römisches Theater, changing at Bad Munster am Stein
Obviously
️I presume because Römisches Theater is closest to the geographical centre of Mainz?
@jon [eye twitch at their title casing code messing up and capitalising Am]
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@jon In this case I think it's not entirely SNCFs fault as DB also uses the "Ersatzverkehr" name in their system for the bus stop. Which is a bit odd and regulary confuses some passengers.
@onterof But Hbf, and Hbf Ersatzverkehr would be OK. Station called Mainz (no Hbf) and then Hbf Ersatzverkehr leads to confusion.
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But weirdly it does give prices... and even sort of Sparpreis. But with €15 price difference.
Why?
How?
@jon
Because of different contingents for the international train probably. -
Oh and this is an interesting one
SNCF Connect *will* give me a 13 min connection in Mannheim, off the France-Germany ICE
DB will NOT give me that connection, I presume because they know that Dobrindt's illegal non- #Schengen compliant border controls will almost certainly mean the connection is missed in Mannheim. DB puts you on a later ICE in Frankfurt instead
Also the other day I found a Germany-France case where SNCF would not give me a tight connection in Strasbourg, but DB would
Now here is a case where SNCF will give me a tight connection in Mannheim, and DB will not
Vive la coopération !
Es lebe die Zusammenarbeit! -
@jon [eye twitch at their title casing code messing up and capitalising Am]
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Oh and this is an interesting one
SNCF Connect *will* give me a 13 min connection in Mannheim, off the France-Germany ICE
DB will NOT give me that connection, I presume because they know that Dobrindt's illegal non- #Schengen compliant border controls will almost certainly mean the connection is missed in Mannheim. DB puts you on a later ICE in Frankfurt instead
@jon
Trust DB in this case 🥴 -
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@jon
Because of different contingents for the international train probably.@_Hemmschuh But what ticket would I then get? Or would I then get 2 PDFs? One for the international bit, one for the German bit?
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@jon
Trust DB in this case 🥴@_Hemmschuh Yes, sadly. But this is... tricky! There is no error shown!
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Also the other day I found a Germany-France case where SNCF would not give me a tight connection in Strasbourg, but DB would
Now here is a case where SNCF will give me a tight connection in Mannheim, and DB will not
Vive la coopération !
Es lebe die Zusammenarbeit!But back to what I was *trying* to work out, before SNCF Connect's weird takes on German stations confused me...
SNCF *CAN* sell a bunch of connections in Germany again
But it *CANNOT* sell a Paris - Brugge
or Marseille - Genova 
. There it tries to sell me half the journey
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@_Hemmschuh But what ticket would I then get? Or would I then get 2 PDFs? One for the international bit, one for the German bit?
@jon
Just open the conditions, i think SNCF sells you 2 tickets, one for the cooperation train which is a SNCF tarification and one DB ticket -
But back to what I was *trying* to work out, before SNCF Connect's weird takes on German stations confused me...
SNCF *CAN* sell a bunch of connections in Germany again
But it *CANNOT* sell a Paris - Brugge
or Marseille - Genova . There it tries to sell me half the journeyI also really appreciate that - although it cannot sell me a ticket for it - SNCF *can* show me the Bruxelles - Brugge train, but does not know what type of train it is, so just puts EMPTY in the result
Like DB has been able to do this correctly in a web search since I did I first Interrail trip in 2001 (and yes that is not a typo)
SNCF Connect cannot do what DB search has been doing for at least 25 years
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@_Hemmschuh Yes, sadly. But this is... tricky! There is no error shown!
@jon
Yeah the blocked correspondances are not transparently shown sadly... -
@jon
Yeah the blocked correspondances are not transparently shown sadly...@_Hemmschuh we are going to have fun with this in the forthcoming Regulation on ticketing being proposed later this spring by the European Commission.
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@_Hemmschuh we are going to have fun with this in the forthcoming Regulation on ticketing being proposed later this spring by the European Commission.
@jon
The big cheminot privilege: I rarely buy regular tickets 🫣 -
@jon
The big cheminot privilege: I rarely buy regular tickets 🫣@_Hemmschuh The big travel as much as I do: I rarely buy regular tickets (Interrail does very well out of me)
But seriously, you've not forgotten what it's like to be a regular passenger, and that's important.
