About this journey

Chur station, shared by Swiss Federal Railways and the Rhaetian Railway and set at 584 m elevation with 6 platforms and 15 tracks, serves as the starting point of a journey that descends northwest through the Rhine valley toward the canton of St. Gallen. Out of Chur, the RhB operates over a three-rail alignment — a Dreischienengleis — that allows both standard-gauge and metre-gauge trains to share the same track as far as Felsberg, an arrangement that makes the infrastructure transition from RhB to SBB territory visible in the trackwork itself. Construction of the Rhine valley line was originally begun by the Schweizerische Südostbahn, which intended to build a railway through the Lukmanier Pass; financial difficulties led to the company being taken over mid-construction by the United Swiss Railways (Vereinigte Schweizerbahnen), and the line eventually passed into the federal network.

At Sargans, one of Switzerland's more notable junction stations, trains operated by SBB, Südostbahn, THURBO, and Austrian Federal Railways converge, reflecting the corridor's role as an international gateway between Switzerland and Austria. From Sargans, the journey continues northwest on the Ziegelbrücke–Sargans line, which opened in 1858 and runs 33.6 km through the cantons of St. Gallen and Glarus, electrified at 15 kV / 16.7 Hz AC overhead catenary. The line follows the valley floor as the terrain opens toward the lowlands.

Ziegelbrücke station, the terminus, lies at 425 m elevation in the municipality of Schänis and is a junction where four lines converge: the Lake Zürich left-bank line, the Rapperswil–Ziegelbrücke line, the Ziegelbrücke–Linthal line, and the Ziegelbrücke–Sargans line. The journey thus moves from a shared Alpine terminus where narrow-gauge mountain railways meet federal express routes, through a historic valley corridor, to a compact lowland junction that distributes traffic toward Zürich and the Glarus Alps.