About this journey

Rapperswil station sits on the north shore of Lake Zürich at the northern end of the Seedamm, the narrow causeway separating the Obersee from the main body of the lake. It is a junction where several lines converge: the Südostbahn's Seedamm line, the Lake Zürich right-bank line, the Uster line, and the Ziegelbrücke line. The station's railway history reaches back to 1859, when the first steam trains ran toward Rüti and Schmerikon, and the Seedamm crossing itself dates to 1878, when the Gotthardbahn built the line across the causeway.

From Rapperswil the S7 service runs northwest toward Winterthur, joining the Zürich–Winterthur corridor for its final leg through Effretikon. That Effretikon–Winterthur section was opened in 1855 by the Swiss Northeastern Railway, doubled in 1862, and electrified on 6 August 1925. It is regarded as the busiest and most congested railway section in Switzerland, serving as the bottleneck between Zürich and Eastern Switzerland. A three-track upgrade has been completed between Winterthur station and the motorway underpass at Tössmühle to ease the pressure, and approaching the terminus the line passes under the Storchen Bridge before reaching Winterthur station itself — a major node connecting Zürich with Eastern Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, and Switzerland's fifth-busiest station.