About this journey

La Chaux-de-Fonds station sits at roughly 1,000 metres in the Jura Mountains, a few kilometres south of the French border, and serves as an unusual convergence point where standard-gauge SBB lines from Neuchâtel and Biel meet the metre-gauge tracks of the Chemins de fer du Jura, which run through the street before joining the station throat. The city itself was rebuilt on a grid street plan after a fire in 1794, a layout unique among Swiss cities and part of the reason La Chaux-de-Fonds and neighbouring Le Locle received UNESCO World Heritage status in 2009 for their watch-making urban planning.

From La Chaux-de-Fonds, an hourly InterRegio service connects down through the Jura to Bern. The BLS RABe 528 MIKA operates this route, one of several operators using Bern station alongside SBB and the metre-gauge Regionalverkehr Bern-Solothurn. Bern station itself opened progressively between 1858 and 1860, its construction driven by Bern's selection as Switzerland's federal capital in 1848. The station is currently subject to a major expansion — a new underground hall and pedestrian underpass approved in June 2017, with costs for the station element alone reaching CHF 614 million. The journey moves from a high Jura plateau city shaped by craft industry and a precise urban grid down to a busy federal capital terminus still mid-transformation.