Zurich > Lauterbrunnen > Milan via rail....help please!

We had the same route last September. We landed in Zurich and went straight to Lauterbrunnen (actually Wengen) for the first four days of our vacation.

Zurich-Bern-Interlaken Ost-Lauterbrunnen (make sure you transfer at Interlaken Ost, not Interlaken West)
http://www.rome2rio.com/s/Zurich/Lauterbrunnen shows the route & gives you the links to the times/tickets.

Lauterbrunnen-Spiez-Brig-Milan
You will be going past, Stresa, which we highly recommend as a 1-2 day stop.

Most schedules sources will give you similar results, focused on the fastest connection times, unless you request slower options. Any option will be pretty scenic, but the route via Brig is most common. How to Look Up Train Schedules and Routes Online gives you the DB train schedule link and tips for using it. National railway sites (www.sbb.ch or www.trenitalia.com) reflect a few lines that DB does not, such as Tirano-Varenna-Milan along the east side of Lake Como, but that route is a significant detour and takes more time.

If you can muster the strength just go on to Lauterbrunnen for you first night. It's really not that difficult.

What is it with Interlaken these days??? Interlaken is just a little town with great rail connections. Just transfer trains there and go on into the Lauterbrunnen Valley and surrounging alpine villages. People somehow get the idea that Interlaken is a vacation destination - it's not. If people actually stay in Interlaken they end up doing day trips to lauterbrunnen (about 20 minutes away) so what's the point of staying in Interlaken. Trust me - the sights you came to see begin in Lauterbrunnen; don't waste your precious vacation time wondering around Interlaken.

Forgot to add "the best options for trains"? Just buy your ticket from lauterbrunnen to Milano Centrale and then on to wherever you're going to from there. You can purchase those tickets from www.sbb.ch (the Swiss Train Site). The Italian Train Site www.trenitalia.com will sell you tickets from Interlaken Ost to Milano Centrale (Lauterbrunnen is not recognized by Trenitalia). You can also purchase the tickets at any train station ticket counter in Switzerland. Buy them now, buy them later from the counter, it doesn't matter.

What else about the train did you want to know?

I concur with Tim's comment. As soon as you're near Lauterbrunnen, you won't want to spend any extra time in Interlaken. We did stop for lunch in Spiez as an hour train stop, on our way to Stresa - you might like it for a quick break.