Taking the train in France is easy, at least during “normal” times. By “normal” times I mean those times when it’s not hoo hot, there are no strikes and no snow in view.

It’s those tensed weeks of the year when the train journey becomes more triky.

There’s a particular kind of silence that falls over a French train station when the departure board stops updating.

Everyone stares at it anyway. Nobody moves. A voice announces something in fast, crackly French, and half the platform turns to the other half with the same expression: did you catch that?

I spent a lot of last week in that silence.

I’m Ersilia – architect and travel lover

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The journey that made me write these tips

I had a work trip to Chalon-sur-Saône, a small city about two hours from Lyon.

From Toulouse, where I live, it’s normally around seven hours of travel.

Long, but manageable. You bring a book, you change trains once or twice, you arrive tired but fine.

Mine took almost fifteen hours.

And then, the next morning, I got up and did it all over again to come home.

If you’ve been following the news this summer (2026), you’ll know France is in the middle of another intense heatwave.

Every year it seems to get a little worse, and this one has hit the rail network hard.

Over the course of my two journeys, we were delayed by trees falling onto the tracks, by rails damaged by the heat, by wildfires spreading across parts of the south, and — my favourite — by our train stopping to pick up passengers stranded from another delayed train, which of course delayed us further.

The trains themselves are air conditioned. Many of the stations are not.

That’s the part nobody warns you about. Waiting in a station when it’s 40°C (104°F) is an experience I would happily never repeat.

There’s no cool corner to retreat to, the little shop runs out of cold drinks by mid-afternoon, and once you’re delayed, you’re just… there. Waiting. Watching a board that isn’t changing.

So this is the post I wish someone had handed me before I left.

First thing first : Book directly with SNCF if you can

I still use Omio to compare routes, it’s genuinely good for seeing your options at a glance, especially if you’re piecing together a longer journey.

But comparing and buying are two different things.

The moment something goes wrong, having booked through a third party adds a layer between you and the people who can actually help. Rebooking, refunds, compensation claims, all of it is simpler when SNCF has your booking directly.

Compare wherever you like. Buy from the source.

If you’re planning a trip to France, make sure to check out my list of apps that you should know about before visiting.

Don’t panic when SNCF stops calling itself SNCF

This one confused me for an embarrassingly long time.

You book on SNCF Connect, you click through to check something about your regional train, and suddenly you’re on a site called BreizhGo, in different colours, with a different logo, and no obvious mention of SNCF anywhere.

You haven’t clicked a dodgy link. You’re in the right place.

Here’s what’s going on. Long-distance trains keep the names you’d expect: TGV INOUI, OUIGO, Intercités. All SNCF, all bookable in the same app.

But regional trains — the TER, the ones you’ll spend most of your time on if you’re travelling anywhere that isn’t Paris–Lyon–Marseille — are co-run with the regions. And most regions have given theirs a local brand name.

So depending on where you are:

• Brittany → BreizhGo
• Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (the Riviera, Marseille, Avignon) → ZOU !
• Occitanie (Toulouse, Montpellier) → liO
• Normandy → Nomad
• Grand Est (Strasbourg, Reims) → Fluo
• Centre-Val de Loire (the Loire châteaux) → Rémi
• Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (Dijon, Besançon) → Mobigo
• Pays de la Loire (Nantes) → Aléop
• Île-de-France (Paris and its suburbs) → Transilien, under Île-de-France Mobilités

The reassuring part: it’s the same train, the same staff, the same ticket. SNCF Connect handles nearly all of it.

If it’s any comfort, the locals find it confusing too. A national survey found that more than 80% of French people had never heard of most of these regional brands, and 14% assumed Aléop was an airline.

Where the regional sites genuinely earn their existence is the local deals. Regional passes, day tickets, the famous €1 fares that pop up in Occitanie: those live on the regional pages rather than the national one, and they’re often significantly cheaper than what SNCF Connect shows you by default.

So: worth a look before you book a short hop. Just don’t let the unfamiliar logo convince you that you’ve booked with the wrong company.

Download the SNCF app, and put your tickets in it

With the SNCF app, you’ll usually get push notifications about delays and platform changes, and having your tickets in one place saves you digging through your inbox on a hot platform with 4% battery.

But don’t trust the notifications completely. Mine arrived late more than once, and one cancellation never came through at all. Check the email address you booked with too; sometimes the information lands there first.

Check the station board, not just your train

Instead of only refreshing the app, search something like “Toulouse departures” or “Lyon arrivals” on Google.

The live station boards tend to update before the app does, and you’ll see immediately whether your train is running late, often twenty or thirty minutes before the app admits it.

That head start matters. It’s the difference between calmly finding an alternative and sprinting across a station.

Listen to the on-board announcements (even if your French isn’t great)

They’re only in French, and they’re fast. I’ve lived here for years and there were still moments where I genuinely had no idea what had just been said.

Listen anyway.

Before every station, they explain what passengers with connections should do — which platform, which replacement service, whether to stay on board.

That information rarely makes it into the app.

If you catch your destination’s name and nothing else, that’s your cue to ask someone. Which brings me to the most valuable people on the train.

When in doubt, find a contrôleur

The ticket inspectors are usually somewhere near the café or bar carriage, and they are, without exaggeration, the only people who reliably know what’s happening.

Show them your ticket, tell them where you’re trying to get to, and ask what your best option is.

Twice on this trip, a contrôleur rerouted me onto a completely different connection that I would never have found on my own.

They can also confirm whether your onward train is being held for you, which saved me a night in a station I’d rather not name.

A little “bonjour, excusez-moi de vous déranger” goes a long way here.

The compensation nobody tells visitors about

Here’s the part most people travelling through France have no idea about.

If your final train arrives more than 30 minutes late, SNCF offers compensation. Not as a goodwill gesture you have to fight for, but as a published guarantee, with an online form.

Given how routine delays become in summer, it’s genuinely worth checking after your trip rather than writing the whole thing off as bad luck.

Keep your ticket references, note your actual arrival time, and submit the claim when you’re home and horizontal.

You can start here: SNCF’s 30-minute delay guarantee

What I’d actually pack

If you’re travelling France by train this summer, three things earn their space in your bag:

A bottle of water. Refillable, and fill it before you board. Station shops sell out, and a delayed platform in 40°C heat is not where you want to discover that.

A portable charger. Your phone is your ticket, your live departure board and your way of telling someone you’ll be late. Fifteen hours is a lot to ask of one battery.

A bit of patience. Nothing about a heatwave delay is anyone’s fault, and the staff on the ground are having a worse day than you are.

You probably won’t need all three. But if you do, you’ll be very glad you brought them.

Hopefully your trip is a little less eventful than mine.

If you’re planning a whole trip in Provence without a car or you want to see the French Riviera by train, now you know how.