About this journey

Lucerne station sits on the south shore of Lake Lucerne, a terminal where metre-gauge and standard-gauge tracks share the same concourse. The metre-gauge Brünig line, owned and operated by the Zentralbahn, departs from here toward Interlaken, and it is this line that the journey follows southwest toward Giswil. The station itself dates to 1856, when the Schweizerische Centralbahn opened its main line from Olten and Basel; the current building followed in 1896. Leaving the city, the train passes through the tunnel opened in late 2012 between Kriens Mattenhof and the station approaches — a route that replaced a less direct surface alignment, removed several congested level crossings, and introduced double track on that section.

Beyond the tunnel the line runs on adhesion throughout, crossing from the canton of Lucerne into the canton of Obwalden before reaching Giswil. That cantonal boundary also marks a significant engineering threshold: Giswil is the furthest station from Lucerne reachable without rack equipment. From here onward, the Brünig line over the Brünig Pass toward Interlaken is equipped with rack rails. The journey from Lucerne to Giswil therefore captures the full adhesion portion of one of Switzerland's best-known metre-gauge mountain railways, ending precisely where the character of the line changes.