About this journey

Lucerne station, a terminal opened in 1856 as the southern end of the Schweizerische Centralbahn main line from Olten and Basel, provides the starting point for this cross-Switzerland journey. The current concourse, designed by Santiago Calatrava and opened on 5 February 1991, replaced a building destroyed twenty years earlier; its fourteen tracks, numbered 2 through 15 across seven island platforms, funnel a dense web of services toward the east.

The train on this route is the SOB RABe 526 TRAVERSO, operating the Voralpen Express — an hourly InterRegio service connecting Lucerne and St. Gallen via Arth-Goldau and Rapperswil. St. Gallen station, which also dates from 1856 and was refurbished between 2016 and 2018, serves as the terminus: a junction where SOB's standard-gauge Romanshorn–Toggenburg line meets SBB main lines and the metre-gauge Appenzell Railways. Two stations that share an opening year thus bookend a journey of nearly two hours through Central and Eastern Switzerland.