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I am trying to book a train from Deutsche Bahn, that shows a message "Ticket not bookable until further notice" (in the English version of the website) in its listing. However, the button to book is active, and on proceeding I can reach up to the payment page without any issues. I did not try proceeding further since I want to make sure it won't cause problems later.

What does this message exactly mean?

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    @DavidSupportsMonica The train is listed in other portals too, such as thetrainline.com. But since it operated by DB, and this message is on the DB website, I was worried about facing any unexpected issues on the day of travel. This would be a connecting train for me, so finding out at the last moment would be inconvenient, and so I wanted to check once before booking.
    – GoodDeeds
    Commented Dec 7, 2019 at 22:41
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    @DavidSupportsMonica No, but the train at the same time is listed under a different number on the day before and after - ICE 516 instead of ICE 1126. I am not aware what this means.
    – GoodDeeds
    Commented Dec 7, 2019 at 22:45
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    @BernhardDöbler I also just found out that the train at the same time on the day before and after is listed under a different number: ICE 516 instead of ICE 1126. Does this have any significance?
    – GoodDeeds
    Commented Dec 7, 2019 at 22:46
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    Can you try the German version of the website to see what it says? Perhaps it is a mistranslation or for some other reason the meaning is clearer in German.
    – phoog
    Commented Dec 8, 2019 at 0:21
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    @phoog Thank you, I should have done this myself before. It says "Der Zug ist vorübergehend nicht reservierbar." which google translates to "The train is temporarily not reservable.", which I guess means that tickets are available but seats cannot be reserved. Thank you for the suggestion.
    – GoodDeeds
    Commented Dec 8, 2019 at 0:36

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I found the answer, thanks to a comment by @phoog.

The German version of the website says "Der Zug ist vorübergehend nicht reservierbar.", which seems to translate to "The train is temporarily not reservable.".

This suggested that a ticket can be booked, but a seat cannot not be reserved. I tried by going to the end of the process (I realized there was one more step before payment that I had missed), and indeed the English version also said that reserving seats is temporarily unavailable.

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    "reserving tickets" should read "reserving seats" in the last sentence.
    – asdfex
    Commented Dec 8, 2019 at 12:58
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    All ICE 1126 (running every Saturday) are currently non-reservable. Maybe that is to be more flexible with the type of train running this service.
    – asdfex
    Commented Dec 8, 2019 at 13:00
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    Sometimes it means that the seat reservations are sold out (or that they don't yet know which wagons will be used, so the seat plan is not available). If the whole train is sold out the "To offer selection" button should be disabled/missing. I've met situations in the past where everything seemed to work fine until the final payment which then failed with "no reservation possible" (for a bike, though) - as that was quite annoying (required trial and error through the whole booking process until a train was found that did have space left) I hope this is a recent advance :-).
    – cbeleites
    Commented Dec 10, 2019 at 10:52

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