About this journey

Aix-les-Bains – Le Revard station, a multimodal hub since 2007, sits in a narrow corridor between the Lac du Bourget to the west and Mont Revard — the first rampart of the Massif des Bauges — to the east. This geography shapes the opening minutes of the journey, as the line threads the northeastern fringe of that lakeside corridor before heading north toward Annecy. The town's relationship with rail runs deep: Aix-les-Bains was among the earliest European municipalities to host a rail network, a legacy dating to its administration by the Dukes of Savoie.

The line followed here is the Ligne d'Aix-les-Bains-Le Revard à Annemasse, which runs 94.6 kilometres through the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region. This B5uxh Corail cab car covers the southern portion of that route, arriving at Annecy station — a terminus opened in 1866. Today Annecy station is served by both SNCF and CFF, the latter operating the cross-border Léman Express, and a multimodal interchange connecting bus routes to the station opened in December 2012. The journey moves from a spa town framed by an Alpine lake and mountain wall to an Alpine terminus that has grown into a busy regional node, the two ends of the route carrying quite different railway characters.