Buying a rail pass like this will also help you to retain your sanity when faced with some of the more ludicrous pricing policies that are, sadly, all too common on most of the major European rail networks.

For example:

Passengers who choose to travel from London to Paris through the Channel Tunnel, on the Eurostar express train can end up paying three times as much as they need to if they don’t work “the system” correctly. And, of course, you can only work the system correctly if you know what the system is, and no-one is going to tell you, are they?

Such Eurostar passengers who decide to take the train from the respective capital of the UK to that of France – something that is well worth doing once, even if it is only to say that you have done so – and who only plan using Eurostar one way, can save more than £100 (US$197) simply because they know what they are doing!

All they need to do is to book a return ticket and then to use only the outbound portion of the ticket. For reasons that only the Brits or the French could ever hope of dreaming up, the company's obviously totally logical pricing policy dictates that some single fares are almost three times as expensive as returns.

For example, on a day within the past couple of weeks, when booking same day travel tickets for a one-way trip to Paris, passengers would have been asked to pay £155 (US$305) for a single ticket on the 19.11 from London Waterloo.

A return ticket on the same train, with an option to return on the 15.19 the next day, was priced at £59 (US$116) - a saving of £96! (US$188).

Similarly, a return ticket from Paris to London a couple of days later, traveling North on the 07.16am train, with an option to return four days later at 17.40, would have cost £52 (US$102) - a saving of £103 (US$203) of the cost of the one-way ticket.

A spokesperson for Eurostar miraculously managed to keep a straight face whilst espousing the company line that: "We have a standard single fare of £155, which is fully flexible. In our experience, these tickets are purchased by business travelers who need to travel one way." Eurostar does not offer any non-flexible single tickets.

It’s called corporate insanity, and it is something that anyone, but anyone, who wishes to enjoy their hard earned vacation should avoid at all costs!

Or, put it another way, How would you feel to discover that you had just paid $200 more than you needed to for a one way trip from Paris to London?

The simple, painless answer is to bypass what is laughably called the ticket pricing “system” of most major European rail operators all together, and get your passes before you go.