European Railroad Discussion > Eurail pass monetary distribution

My wife and are having a grand time on our Eurail Pass - 17 days was about $860 per person for a first class seat, not including any seat reservation charges which we may choose to incur.
My question is this: we hop on and off trains at will. We fill in the sheet provided which the conductor punches with his date device. How do the countries and rail companies know how to divide the revenue? At the end of my trip they ask me voluntarily to send them my trip sheet of the trains we rode.
Do they have a set formula?

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Sounds like a great trip. I have no answer for your question but one observation. Most crews seem to care less if you fill out the form with various trains and dates you have done. Others insist on it. Also, few ask to see your passport but most don't. Since your passport is checked when the pass is validated, not sure why they sometimes need to see it again, especially since it's open boarders between all Schengen countries.

Yes, sending in your completed trip sheet helps assure that the revenue is properly divided. I have no idea how they do it when the information is not submitted. probably by some kind of formula.

MEKoch Wrote:
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> My wife and are having a grand time on our Eurail
> Pass - 17 days was about $860 per person for a
> first class seat, not including any seat
> reservation charges which we may choose to incur.
>
> My question is this: we hop on and off trains
> at will. We fill in the sheet provided which the
> conductor punches with his date device. How do
> the countries and rail companies know how to
> divide the revenue? At the end of my trip they
> ask me voluntarily to send them my trip sheet of
> the trains we rode.
> Do they have a set formula?

My experiences are with the BritRail Pass, which is a separate pass and isn't directly comparable with Eurail Pass because it involves only one national system. I've had more than 10 of them in this century. The revenue is divided according to a formula that favours the major rail companies/common tourist routes and has nothing to do with my personal usage, which is abnormal, to say the least. As a railfan I try to accumulate as much new mileage as possible, which is not what the average foreign tourist would do. They would mostly hit all the usual tourist spots and travel the main corridors. In contrast, I have ridden 99% of the British network in 10 visits that amount to seven months altogether, and have ridden slightly more than 1,000 trains (I keep a detailed log of all trips, including actual departure and arrival times compared with the public timetable).

Until a few years ago, the glossy folder containing the actual pass had a register on the back to record the trips, and this could be returned for entry into a contest, the prize being a full refund. There was perhaps space for eight trips, but I average about 100 trains per vacation, using the pass almost every day for as much as five weeks. So I would enter a sample of my trips that most closely resembled the routes/places that a typical tourist might visit, filling up just the eight or so lines on the form and mailing it post-free on my last day in Britain.

On one occasion, my filling out the survey led to a follow-up phone call a couple of months later from a market researcher, who wanted to know more about my rail travels. Most of my answers blew the top off the thermometer because my usage was so far from the norm. I can't recall the questions in any detail, but I think the maximum for usage was something like "Did you take more than 10 trips with your pass?"

I actually got out my detailed trip log and gave some details on how many trips I had taken, explaining that there was no way I could fit all that into the few spaces on the official form. The researcher said she had never encountered anything like that in all the time she had been doing these phone surveys, which did not surprise me.

It occurred to me later that perhaps it was not wise of me to disclose just how much riding I got out of each pass, because the aim of the survey was clearly to test consumer reaction to various proposals to narrow the range of the pass. For example, how would I feel if the pass could not be used until the commuter peak had ended at 09:30 each weekday morning? All my answers were to the effect that I did not want to see any restrictions and that, without the pass, I probably would not visit Britain.

In general, I estimate that I get about four to five times the dollar value of the pass, when compared with the full "walk-up" fares that would be paid by those who had not bought tickets until the day of travel. I feel that it is a fair comparison because the pass allows me to travel wherever I want on the spur of the moment, with no restriction as to what train I take. It is about the only bargain I encounter on my vacations in Britain.

Like the Eurail Pass, the BritRail pass requires the holder to enter his name and passport number before the first usage and there is an obligation to show the passport on request to onboard staff or those at the barriers to platforms. In all the rides noted above, I have never been asked to show my passport. And only very rarely has a conductor stamped, punched or initialled one of my passes, and indeed there is no official space for that. Most just give it a cursory glance.