DB 1st Class - Unreserved Carriages?

[Masbroughlad]

Looking at trying to reserve 1st class seats into Dresden on ICE services from the West. Most in the day saying fully reserved.

If the App is showing no seats available, does this mean the trains are full? Or like in the UK, are there some seats/carriages left unreserved for turn up on the day customers?

Alternatively, we're on a Global interrail 1st class pass, so if we can take a non-app generated route that isn't stupidly long, that's fine. We'd rather be on a train for an hour longer with a seat, than waste our first class pass in 2nd class.

Any suggestions welcome. We are travelling Stuttgart to Dresden on 9th December. Happy to leave early-ish, after 0700. Intercity preferred, EuroCity etc. Don't mind REx for a short leg.

Additional question - Interrail passes aren't due on FlixTrains are they?

Thanks in advance, knowledgable people!

 

[nwales58]

On DB Fern trains only some seats are reservable, aiming to leave enough for walk-up passengers. To get an idea of whether a service is full look at the 1/2/3 person pictograms shown alongside each journey in the planner, then click on the train to see how predicted loadings vary after each station.

Select 1st class before making the query as the predictions seem to be for each class.

On the day things may be different, usually because the service has gone pear-shaped and people from delayed/cancelled suddenly make a quiet service overloaded or a usually-busy one is empty.

So other than avoiding 'high demand expected' trains just don't worry.

On board, maybe reserved (ggf reserviert) seats are just that: probably ok but someone might turn up with a reservation. Bahnbonus seats are usually ok too, I 've never been turfed off one. ICE4s have green/orange/red reservation lights making it a lot quicker to find empty ones.

Load predictions are only up to about a month ahead so try the same day of week in that period to see.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 1 Nov 2024 ==

Also, vagonweb may help. E.g. ICE 772 is a 13 coach ICE4 with 3 and a bit coaches of first at the leading end. ICE 1557, which may be busier, is a pair of ICE-T, 7+5 coaches with only 1 coach of first in each, at Frankfurt Hbf the 7 at the front on arrival goes to Dresden. So if that 1st is full I'd dash down to the other half and come back at Leipzig where it is dropped.

 

[dutchflyer]

1. there may be no seats free left ALL the way. Wich means you can find empties, but may have to change seats somewhere. Its all very clearly (if it all works-but this usually does-unlike the timekeeping or other aspects) shown on the small displays
2.BahnBONus seats: in theory reserved for honorific customers with many ´frequent railmiles´-in practice often still open-but you MAY have to give it up if indeed such people arrive en-masse
3.what the germans themselves often proclaim is: sit in the bistro carriage and consume