Cathy, there are regular pieces on the TV news at the moment about the RENFE booking chaos, every time a RENFE spokesman is asked they are non-committal. As you can imagine, the situation is causing a lot of annoyance. They refuse to confirm or deny what the cuts to services will be.

We were lucky in that the train schedule they kept were ideal for our schedule. We are looking forward to our visit and certainly could not have done it without all of you and your helpful insight.

Hello,

I am arriving Madrid airport at 11:30 am and I would like to catch train to Seville. Do you think I can make it to the 2 p.m. train on time?

RENFE online purchases have always been "challenging." Persistence does pay off. Watch out for Raileurope--they don't always show all the train options or offer all the discounts.

On our trip to Spain, we needed tickets Madrid/Sevilla, Sevilla/Granada, Granada/Madrid. Using RENFE, some routes did show up about 60 days in advance, others didn't get completely loaded until about 30 days in advance.

Also had lots of trouble getting our credit card accepted, but with patience and a couple of phone calls to USAA, it eventually worked out. It turned out we needed something called a "secure code" from Mastercard. It was easy to get, but it took a while to figure out that's what we needed.

If you'll make more than a few train trips, a rail pass is great for this. After arriving early by plane, I was able to get a train earlier than I had thought. It appears they rarely fill up completely and you can make reservations right beforehand.