I was looking for a thread that would contain information useful to those who are wanting to purchase their France rail tickets online, and did not really find so much in terms of general purchasing and savings on SNCF / TGV (high speed) and RER (regional).

It is fairly easy to book French rail (SNCF or Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer) TGV and Thalys (high speed rail) tickets online and print them out, just as you would an airline ticket - but your ticket is also your pass to board. And you can elect your seats (site61 helps you with diagrams, photos, etc.) whilst you book after selecting the itinerary and before buying, including upstairs, downstairs, 2 or 4 side by side, facing, etc whatever is offered, in many cases. Seamless. But continue reading...

For TER Regional trains you can also purchase your tickets online, but... to retrieve the tickets you can use a train station automated kiosk as long as you have a "chip-and-PIN" credit card, or go to the ticket windows and recover your ticket (with the same credit card you used to book). The ticket vendors do have a way to use a credit card without a chip and PIN, but the queues can be lengthy so give yourself plenty of time. N.B, Some US credit cards are now available with chip and PIN, but you have to call and inquire; my particular Citi card comes with chip and PIN and zero forex charges, so it's the one i use for tgv-europe purchases.

RER can not be purchased online via the tgv-europe site.com at all.

The Man in Seat Sixty-One has a "Beginner's Guide to Train Travel in France" - if you are a beginner or merely want to know more, this is your place to start (but read here too, because you will gain some context and other members will undoubtedly add tips and tricks).

First, for context: the SNCF reservations system, including eurostar, RESARAIL, was designed by the (ex-AA) Sabre team, beginning in 1994; it is based on Sabre ELVA. Therefore, it has a lot of our favorite Revenue Management tools built in. (Link to history.)

You can save by purchasing in advance, and there are breaks for people traveling together, seniors (60 and over,) etc. Seats go on sale usually 90 days prior to travel. The cheaper the ticket, the more restrictions - including refundability, ability to change seats, etc. The cheapest, "Prem" are - well, the cheapest, and very restricted, non-refundable tickets; Loisir (leisure) fares are changeable, even the day of departure (though day of departure changes cost EUR 10 and after departure there is no remaining value) and full-fare are fully changeable. Yup, Revenue Management systems! But you can save big money using the tgv-europe site and using the discounts (there is a sidebar with a click on line called "modify other criteria" to click on for adding the ages, number of travellers, etc.)

You may be able to save with a pass, but then again, if you are only going to do say, two long trips in two days and a couple of short trips on TER regional rail on a couple of others, you may find a rail pass is significantly costlier than discounted fares for the routes you will be traveling. seat61.com has a good take on this, and of course you can review the different passes on the SNCF websites.

Rail Europe is merely a SNCF symbiote, a cluster of subsidiaries that charge you a fee to book on the Resarail system, and fail to offer many of the discount opportunities SNCF offers you directly; SNCF tries to boot you to Rail Europe so it pays its way. E.g. if you go to the SNCF site and select "USA" as your country, it will most likely try to boot you to Rail Europe. You probably do not need the "convenience" of paying much more - and paying a fee to do that!

I sometimes use Rail Europe to check schedules, then book on TGV-Europe (the main SNCF site in English).

You can use the referral link on site61, or you can go to the SNCF website and state you are in "Canada" (may still try to "guide" you, but I have been successful with this,) or, say, "Afghanistan" and book on. I have done this and used my US credit card, then merely printing the resultant tickets to a PDF document for future use. ("Mexico" seems to cause "technical failure" messages, and perhaps there are others.)

Beware of popups asking if you wish to be referred to "our local website" and select to click "Continue onto tgv-europe.com"

Please feel free to add your tips for booking rail in France.

I've added some of this, and moved all links to sites and resources, to the wikipost.