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Swiss rail travel advance tickets, reservations required?

Posted by (Central South Carolina) on

So starting adventure April 29. Basel to Luzern. Then May 1 Luzern to Lauterbrunnen via Interlaken and panoramic train. Finally May 4 Lauterbrunnen to Basel.
I have purchased the 1/2 price travel card.
Should I get on the SBB app and book tickets ahead? If if do, I don’t need to use a ticket machine and the 1/2 price is listed in the app.
If I miss the specific train, is the ticket good on other trains to the destination?
Is the Luzern to Interlaken especially need a reservation since panoramic cars (and part of golden pass route)?

Thanks!

Posted by
21142 posts

The Luzern to Interlaken train goes every hour and all the cars have panoramic windows. It just regular old public transportation as far as the Swiss are concerned. No need to buy seat reservations.
A ticket is good for any train on that route for the whole day.
It looks like they are working on the tracks between Interlaken Ost and Spiez on May 4, so you will have to take the replacement bus for that section on the way to Basel. Not a big deal.
The app is handy to have..

Posted by
2493 posts

When you buy a ticket on line you are asked to pick a train from a schedule, but standard tickets are valid for a whole route. When you buy from a ticket vending machine you only pick a destination. The tickets you get in both cases will not have a train nr. on them, just an origin and a destination, and sometimes a route. And you can just travel on any train on the route you purchased.

This is mass transit. It is not like airline travel. It is more like city travel, like subways or commuter railways. In fact, that is what Switzerland has: A nationwide mass transit network.

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