Train ticket question--apologies to MorganB and IrishRovr

Thanks to the great informaiton here, I%26#39;m all set with reserving tickets, printing, etc., and have done several already in order to take advantage of PREM fares. And, we will obviously get our tickets for non-reserved train travel legs once we are in France.

I do have a perhaps dumb question about non-reserved tickets. Can you just buy an %26quot;open%26#39; ticket, so to speak, for a particlular route, or does it have to be for a specific train (day,time)? I ask because we will have to go from one station to another, and I%26#39;m not sure which of several non-reserved trains we might be able to catch (e.g. arrive 11:04 at Gare St. Lazare, and leave from Gare Austerlitz at 11:41 or 13:35.) I%26#39;d just as soon we have the tickets in hand already, but if we had tickets for the earlier train and missed the connection, could we exchange them for tickets for the later one (these would not be PREM fares, just Sr.)?

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Tickets without seat reservations are not for a specific departure, in fact they don%26#39;t guarantee a seat at all, but you must travel from and to the same stations on the same date as the ones you bought the ticket for, and when changing trains somewhere (e.g. Paris), you are expected to take the next reasonable connection. So in this case if you aren%26#39;t sure you can get to the Gare d%26#39;Austerlitz for 11.41 you can catch the 13.35 on the same ticket, because you could easily justify to the ticket collector that you didn%26#39;t manage to get across Paris in time for the earlier train.

Unless you change dates, you do not have to exchange the ticket for a later train (and be careful, not all tickets are refundable anyway - if you think you might want to break your journey somewhere for 24 hours or so, tell the ticket office when you buy your ticket).

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