Brussels Travel Forum

If I am traveling from Brussels to Maastricht with an "Any Belgium Station" ticket is the ticket valid to the point of the final stop (Vise Belgium) before crossing the Dutch border? I am just trying to establish if I need to purchase an additional ticket from Liege to Maastricht or should it be a ticket from Vise to Maastricht? I know the price difference is maybe 2Euro but no need to spend it if I dont have to.

Your ticket (which I presume is actually a Eurostar or Thalys ticket to Brussels and then ABS) is valid only to a Belgian station, so not to Maastricht in the Netherlands. If the last Belgian stop on the train you are taking is Visé, it can cover you to there, and you only need to buy a ticket (at any convenient stop, which can also be when you change trains in Brussels) from there to Maastricht.

Since a few years the Belgian railways treat Maastricht as a "Belgian" station for tarification purposes, as they are now solely repsonsible for the IC to Maastricht. So if you buy a ticket Brussel - Maastricht you pay the Belgian tarif, not the international one. It is not clear however that they now also see Maastrich as one of the "any belgian stations" an Eurostar or Thalys ABS ticket is valid to.
What I would do is to just ask. Board the Brussels - Maastricht train in Brussels. Tell the conductor what ticket you have, and if you need to buy an adition. If you need one, he will sell you one.

Thalys and Eurostar are not part of SNCB (Belgian Railways). As their websites don't specifically mention Maastricht, one would have to assume that "any BELGIAN station" means just that. However, by all means ask whichever company you are travelling with to Brussels - indeed that would have been a good starting point! I would guess chances are higher with Thalys, as Dutch Railways are part of the consortium, but then I thought Thalys also charged for ABS according to the exact destination, so you would normally have discovered whether Maastricht was included when you bought the ticket.

Thalys and Eurostar are joing ventures, and the Belgian railways takes part in both of them.
Eurostar tickets are automatically valid to "Any Belgian Station", and Thalys tickets can be made such with a small surcharge. It is indeed unclear wether Maastricht is considered a Belgian Station in this context. The confusion arises from the fact that the NMBS does treat Maastricht as a Belgian station when buying normal tickets. Belgian domestic, not international tarif is used when for example buying a Brussel - Maastricht ticket, so in some contexts Maastricht is a Belgian station...
This is a recent evolution however.
My experience with Belgian train conductors is however that they are flexible. If you board the train with a ticket that is at least valid for part of the trip they will not treat you as a fare evader, but just sell you whatever you need for the part not covered by the ticket you're holding.