Help understanding train ticket

9 comments

1. DB is not selling tickets for trains that don’t exist. It is more likely that something happened to the 2nd train, causing a delay or the service being canceled.

   In that case, instead of asking randoms on reddit you should go to DB personel at the place and ask them how to proceed, because they can lift the “Zugbindung”, so that your ticket is attached to a specific train, and you can take then any train to proceed to your destination. They can even print that out for you, so you have a new travel plan.

2. It’s not two options, it’s the same train. 8:54 is the departure in Austria and 12:00 is when it reaches its first train station in Germany. I’m guessing that’s got to do something with the different operators (DB, ÖBB)?

   Anyway: “Sparpreis” is only ever valid for a single connection, which is the one listed in the table on the bottom portion of the ticket.

3. >I ended up buying another ticket for snother train.

   You did what?

   Looking at the time table is that the ICE 118 is leaving Lindau at 12:00, which means that there the responsibility changes from the ÖBB to DB.

4. The 118 runs direct from Innsbruck to Stuttgart. I don’t understand why it’s listed like that, but what did you do at 12 that you had to buy a new ticket? Why didn’t you just stay on the train?

5. This is a ticket specifically for the train that departed today from Innsbruck at 8:54 and will arrive to Stuttgard at 14:59.
   The second line in the Zugbindung is due to the fact that around that time you train enters germany.

6. The only notable thing I’ve found about the ICE 118 at 12 o’clock is that Lindau-Reutin, where It is scheduled to depart at 12 o’clock, is the first station directly after the passing the German border

7. As others have pointed out, it’s the same train but it’s listed this way due to the change from ÖBB to DB. I traveled this exact route and my train ticket looked the same way. 8:54 is departure time and 12:00 is when the train switches to DB jurisdiction in Lindau. You had to buy a new ticket because you missed your departure at 8:54.

8. Hm, I think you were mislead by bad information presentation.

   While you shouldn’t have been looking at the Zugbindung section for your travel time, but instead at the Reiseverbindung, it is definitely misleading that such technical information was presented at the same if not higher prominence than what is relevant to you as a customer.

   What exactly is the technical information trying to communicate is not super clear to me. The T&C say that Zugbindung by default only applies to parts of the route operated by DB, and only by exception/special agreement they apply abroad. Potentially, this is the case here: the first time is this exceptional Zugbindung time in Austria, on ÖBB’s part of the route.

   tl;dr: your mistake was looking at the Zugbindung instead of Reiseverbindung. DB’s mistake was putting technical contractual information in such a prominent position in the ticket without explanation of its meaning (like a “nur für amtliche Zwecke” or even a generous explanation from which station each Zugbindung time applies, which would have made it clear it’s not two different connections).

9. Thank you everybody! The thing is that I understood that there was another ICE118 that we could also took, we got late to the train station so wemissed the train. We had booked new tickets, on our way to Stuttgart now.
   I only wanted to understand what I undertood wrong.
   The thing is that I bought a “insurance” from trainline that stated that I could use the ticket for the ICE118 for that train and any other train of the same route for that day. Hence I thought that if in the ticket another ICE 118 was available at 12:00 then I could join on such train