Eurail Travel - value for money?

European train travel is comfortable, reliable and fun - and the Eurail pass sounds like a great concept.

Eurail allows you to buy one ticket that gives you unlimited travel, anywhere in Europe, any time, on almost any train or ferry you like, for the duration of your ticket. Try doing that with an airline ticket!

But is it really the passport to freedom it sounds like?

Ten or fifteen years ago, it was. These days, that freedom is much more restricted, mainly due to booking regulations. I would still recommend the train as my favorite way to travel around Europe - but Eurail may no longer be the best way to pay your fares.

Eurail passes come in various combinations of countries and durations - the most popular Select Pass covers a number of days over a period of a month or months. For instance, you might buy a pass that gives you 10 days' travel spread over 3 months in France, Spain and Portugal.

The pass has 10 blank date boxes on it. Each time you hop on a train, you fill in today's date. Once you've done that, you can travel on as many trains as you like for the rest of that day.

A nice bonus is that if you start your journey after 7pm, you fill in tomorrow's date. So a couple of times, we were able to take a sleeper trip halfway across Europe overnight, enjoy a scenic ferry ride, then take another train to arrive at our next destination before 7pm that evening, all on one "day" of the pass.

A good example of the "after 7pm" trick was my "day" in Switzerland on my first Eurail trip.

I boarded a sleeper train in Barcelona at 9pm, bound for Geneva. Because it was after 7, the trip counted as the next day's travel.

The next morning, I planned to use my pass to take a ferry trip on Lake Geneva. Instead, I stepped into a downpour - I couldn't even see the famous lake through the fog! So I jumped back on the first local train that came along.

That was the beginning of a magical trip through the Swiss mountains. The fog cleared but the rain didn't, so I kept swapping from train to train, criss-crossing the mountains, past spectacular peaks, ice-blue lakes and green flower-dappled pastures. My camera has never worked so hard! And it didn't cost me a cent, because every one of those separate train trips counted as part of the "day" I had used to get to Geneva.

The widespread upgrading of Europe's trains has spoiled the carefree nature of the Eurailpass. You're now required to book a seat on most trains, which means it's no longer possible to leap off one train and jump straight on the next, as I did in Switzerland.

If you buy your train tickets as you go, you can use a multilingual self-service machine at the train station to book your seat, and be on your way in minutes. With a Eurail pass, you have to queue at the ticket office. Queues can be long - plus you have to pay a booking fee.

These extra booking fees come close to making the Eurail pass uneconomic for anyone over 25 - because over that age, you can only buy a first-class Eurail pass, and first-class booking fees can be expensive. On my last trip, I spot-checked fares on the self-service machines and found that for some trips, I could have bought a second-class fare for not much more than the Eurail booking fee! On most trains, the only real difference between second-class and first-class was the perks (like a free meal or entertainment), so I would have been better off if I'd taken a pay-as-you-go approach.

Another worrying development is that rail companies are starting to limit the number of tickets available to Eurail passholders, just like airlines limit the seats for frequent flyers or discounted airfares. People are increasingly being turned away at the booking office because all the Eurail seats on a train are fully booked – only to find, if they buy a normal ticket, that the train is half-empty.

European rail travel - even in second class - is now more comfortable (and much less stressful) than European air travel, so I'm sticking with it - but probably not with Eurail. I can travel almost as cheaply - and avoid the queues - if I buy my tickets as I need them.

If you can commit to a firm itinerary, it's worth getting a price to pre-purchase tickets for your individual train trips - it's likely to work out cheaper than a Eurail pass and less hassle.

Oh, and if you're comparing prices with airline travel - remember that airports (especially for discount carriers) are often a long way from the city, so don't forget the cost of transport to and from the airport, which can be expensive due to the distance. Not to mention the extra travel time and hassle compared to train stations, which are usually in the middle of town.

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Train photo thanks to OliverN5. Switzerland photo by Jacob Montrasio.