Help! Eurail travel from Italy to Switzerland July 2018

Hi. You are too early to see full July schedules. They will be very similar to what you are seeing for May, but minor schedule changes are made effective mid June and those schedules usually aren't loaded into computers and available for sale until much later - likely April or even May. Make your tentative plans based on current schedules, then sit tight and check back later. Enjoy your trip!

The best website for checking schedules all over Europe is the German train website, Bahn.de.

There will definitely be routes in July similar to what you are seeing now for May. You should be able to see the actual schedule by March.

For the best price on this international journey, buy the ticket from Milan to Brig (or better yet Spiez on a direct train) about three months in advance from Trenitalia. Looked for a “Smart”fare. Fro Spiez or Brig on, you will be on a regional Swiss train and you cannot buy tickets more than 30 days in advance. This would be on SBB.ch

But you don’t really need to buy those in advance unless you have a very short change time at the Spiez station.

Eurail is not a train company. It is a travel agency and does not always have all of the train schedules list. As recommended earlier the bahn is the best site FOR schedules. Then buy your ticket from the national rail company at your starting point. Train schedules (varies a bit by country) are posted 90 to 120 days in advance. However, there is little change from one posting period to another.

As others said. Eurail is a North American reseller that only lists trains they sell tickets for. Go to the company running the trains, or https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml for times (but you can't buy tickets there).

SBB (Swiss Railways) changes times once per year in December, so times are already fixed up to December 2018. Italian Railways changes twice per year (December and June), so times are currently only available up to June 2018. But you can assume they will be 90%+ the same as currently, so make a query for the same day of the week in May. Tickets will be available 90-120 days before travel date.

Note there is an issue with buying tickets for this journey on the Italian Railways site.( http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en ). They DO NOT sell or list tickets for internal Swiss journeys. Milan to Interlaken will involve changing onto a Swiss internal train, so you cannot buy an end-to-end ticket from Trenitalia. Instead go to the Swiss Railways site ( https://www.sbb.ch/en ) which can sell you an end-to-end ticket. For March I see fares starting at CHF 45.

Are you actually going to Interlaken, or somewhere further into the mountains (Lauterbrunnen, Mürren etc.)? If so, look up times and prices to that place on the SBB site, not to Interlaken.

And if you are considering using a Eurail pass, reconsider as the Berner Oberlandbahn, a private railway that operates the trains from Interlaken Ost to Lauterbrunnen, Muerrren, Wengen, Grindelwald, Kleine Scheidegg, and the Jungfraujoch, only gives a 25% discount on the tickets.

Any rail travel plans should be checked with www.seat61.com
His advice on passes covers most of the bases. To be sure that a pass will save money, the customer unavoidably must search the point-to-point prices individually.

While the Bahn site gives timetables, it doesn't have prices or sell tickets outside Germany. For alternatives in other countries, Seat 61 recommends www.trainline.eu and www.loco2.com