TGV has announced this morning that they will be extending the booking horizon for the summer holidays for hundreds of services in Brussels and France. The usual 90 day booking window, which is the cause of many complaints for European train travellers, has been pushed back to a whopping 137 for the summer season. Advance booking for TGV services is now available via Loco2 until 26th August, meaning better value train tickets and easier advanced booking. This is the best news we’ve had all day, and hopefully another sign of things to come in the European rail industry.

It’s usually only possible to search for trains and fares up to 90 days, and very occasionally 92 days in advance of travel. Since airlines can offer best value tickets many months, sometimes even years in advance, it’s understandable that travellers are frustrated by the booking horizon for trains. There are various reasons why this is the case, most of them related to the glamorous world of data and interoperability, so there’s a long way to go until we achieve the lofty ideals of transport geeks everywhere. But in the meantime, we’re all terribly excited about advance bookings, if only for our summer holidays.

View the embedded maps below to get a flavour of what’s available or carry out your own search to find available destinations and fares.

Paris to Nice one-way £28

Paris to Milan one-way £23

Paris to Zurich one-way £23

If you’re not familiar with TGV routes in Europe, take a look at this helpful map of the main high-speed lines.

Image: by Aschaf reproduced with thanks under a Creative Commons license