About this journey

Lyon-Part-Dieu station opens the journey: a hub originally opened in 1859 as a freight station and reconstructed in 1978 as part of the Part-Dieu urban neighbourhood project. It sits on the historical Paris–Marseille railway and has grown into the busiest French train station outside of Île-de-France. By 2010 it was serving roughly 51.1 million passengers annually, approaching 140,000 on an average weekday, and a major reconstruction that began in spring 2018 is still reshaping it — a new entrance hall opened in June 2024, followed by an underground interchange plaza in April 2025.

The TER Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes service aboard the SNCF Z23500 follows a corridor that also carries some of the continent's most international traffic: TGV, Eurostar, and Frecciarossa trains all use this route, with the Milan–Paris Frecciarossa operated by Trenitalia France calling at Chambéry–Challes-les-Eaux as an intermediate stop. The destination station lies in the Savoie département and serves as a gateway toward the alpine lines continuing to Bourg-Saint-Maurice and Modane. The journey moves from one of France's great urban rail junctions into the edge of the Alps, the regional TER threading the same tracks as high-speed and international services.