We are planning to take the train from Geneva to Lucerne via the Golden Pass route on October 18th. We plan to spend one night in Lucerne and then take a train from Lucerne to Zurich on the 19th. From what I can tell we need to take a train from Geneva to Montreux (which takes about and hour), then we board a train which takes us on the Golden Pass route (with several changes) we will eventually arrive in Lucerne. It says the trip is about 41/2 hours plus the additional hour from Geneva. So my question is if we leave Geneva around 8:00 AM it appears that we can make it to Lucerne by dinner time. Am I reading this right? I question that because when I tried to put that information in on the SBB website it takes me back to Oct 17th instead of the 18th?
Posted by
Green Bay
21142 posts
I question that because when I tried to put that information in on the SBB website it takes me back to Oct 17th instead of the 18th?
That seems to be a little flaw in the SBB site that you need to watch out for. I think it has something to do with the fact that right now, August 5 at 8:20 pm CDT, but it is August 6 in Switzerland at this moment and the website corrects for this, but does not take into account that you are looking at a future date. Maybe some day, they will wake up and correct it. Meantime, anybody buying tickets on the website, watch out. You can manually adjust it during the search process.
And yes, it takes 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 hours Geneva to Luzern via Montreux, Zweisimmen. and Interlaken Ost.
Posted by
Basel, Switzerland
8889 posts
When you do a search on any rail website (not just SBB), you have to make sure you enter both a start date and time. If you don't, it defaults to the current date and time. The site is designed for people in Switzerland, and many people just want to know when the next train is, so that is the default.
The official rail map here may help with your planning: https://www.sbb.ch/content/dam/sbb/de/pdf/freizeit-ferien/ferien-kurztrips-schweiz/internationale-gaeste/sts-geltungsbereich_en.pdf
If you go to the SBB website ( https://www.sbb.ch/en/ ) and enter Geneva to Luzern (and date and time) be sure to add "via Zweisimmen and Interlaken) to the search criteria or it will route you via the faster route around the Alps, not through them!
Genève dep 08:30, Montreux arr 09:37
Montreux dep 09:44, Zweisimmen arr 11:32
Zweisimmen dep 11:38, Interlaken Ost arr 12:49
Interlaken Ost dep 13:04, Luzern arr 14:55
That appears to be the first through connection of the day.
Posted by
Green Bay
21142 posts
@ Chris F,
The automatic date change has happened ever since SBB did its last website upgrade, and it is peculiar to SBB. When I do a search from North America, I put in the future date and time for the train(s) I want to know about. When the search results come up, it will show the trains for the day BEFORE the date I requested. Being in Switzerland, you would never experience this anomaly, since you are on Swiss time. But it is something you must be careful of when searching from here. I just click on the "Change" button, then advance the date ahead one day, and then "Search for connection" and I get trains for the date I'm looking for.
If you're careful, you will notice the date change after you picked a date off the pop-up calendar. When you click on the "time" box to adjust the time, you'll notice that the "date" box goes back one day. After putting in the time, you have to go back and advance the date one day by clicking on the ">" button.
Posted by
31 posts
I have to suggest the RS link to Rail Europe for this. I have booked multiple train tickets throughout Italy, France, London...but had the HARDEST time trying to book the Gold Pass tickets. I went through the link on this website and purchased just under $500 worth of tickets. The best I can tell is that I paid approximately a $15 premium in commissions on the receipt, but also included in the prices were reserved seats for 2 on the 3 trains that required that. We also had tickets from Zurich and Geneva (no reservations required) included. The ease of use of the website, the automatic reservations, and great customer service while I was waiting for the tickets to become available ( I booked 2 months before they were released) made it TOTALLY worth a $15 premium!
Posted by
not here anymore
631 posts
There is something badly wrong with the SBB website, why can't techies understand the rule "if it ain't broke don't fix it"?
But before that, a warning about most enquiry sites for this journey. They are all designed to default to fastest route and expect you to add more info if that's not what you want. And what you want here is definately not the fastest route. And it looks to me like you can't reserve on this line until a month before so it won't sell tickets until then.
But, the theory of how to get around the bugs at the front. Start at
https://www.sbb.ch/en/buying/pages/fahrplan/fahrplan.xhtml?erweiterteSuche=true&language=en
enter Genève as the start station, actually you just type the first few letters and select it from the list (you must select from the list because it will be indexed to a numerical station code). Likewise set Luzern as destination. Click Add Via and enter Gstaad. When you've got that click Add Via again and enter Interlaken Ost.
Now select the date and time and then click DEP to make sure it is using it as a departure time. If you set the date wrong it will not let you select it from the calendar again but you can overtype it in EUROPEAN format dd.mm.yyyy
You have now set up the correct route. Click Search Connection. It will probably show a set of trains running in a standard pattern every hour or two and all taking the same amount of time. To see the schedule with places where you change train click the departure time.
To buy the ticket click the icon, the takes you to the ticket shop which seems to be stable
If it offers a choice of route select "LAUSANNE-MONTREUX-ZWEISIMMEN-SPIEZ-INTERLAKEN OST-BRÜNIG"