I'm traveling to Switzerland at the end of August and will be buying a SwissPass. When trying to plan actual travel times for some of our day trips, is there a way to figure out which train station you should actually use as your departing and arriving station? The bigger cities obviously have a lot of stations, and many of the towns seem to have a few. The Swiss website doesn't really help you figure out the right one, as far as I can tell.
Posted by
Elk Grove, CA, USA
6898 posts
The Swiss train website primarily shows the main train stations in each city. You can click on Advanced Search under Search Connections but that doesn't help much. These main stations are mostly in the center of the cities. I don't see any place on the Swiss train website where it tells you where the other train stations are unless you KNOW the name of the station. If you know the station, you can enter it and the website will corectly route you to it. For example, I put in Zurich Stadelhofen and I received the train run to this station.
That being said, I have found an unbelievable website that tracks the Swiss trains real time. It's not affiliated with the Swiss train system. CLICK HERE to see the website. Just enter the city you want and a list of train stations will appear. On the Google map, put your mouse over the red triangles with white arrows and the station name will appear. Put your mouse over the train in motion and information about that train will appear. It's really amazing.
Posted by
near NY, NJ, USA
445 posts
Larry that Swiss train site is fabulous!!!!! Am really enjoying playing with it!! Thanks for the tip.
Posted by
New Paltz, NY
9110 posts
Kimberly,
Another method is to use the Swiss Rail site at www.rail.ch and enter the exact address or name of the landmark you are arriving and/or departing from. This way you will get exact directions from which tram/bus/train/boat/cable car to to use, and which direction to walk.
For example if you were traveling from the Hilton Hotel in Zurich to the Hilton Hotel in Basel, simply type that into the "From"/"To" boxes and select "landmark" instead of "station/stop", you will then get exact directions to both places. If you click the "walk" link you can view a walking map as well.
The results will always give you the closest train stations.