About this journey

Zürich Hauptbahnhof stands at the origin of Swiss railways: it was built as the terminus of the Spanisch-Brötli-Bahn, the first railway constructed entirely within Switzerland, which opened on 9 August 1847 connecting Zürich with Baden. Decades of growth reshaped the station repeatedly, most recently with the Durchmesserlinie, whose approximately 5 km Weinberg Tunnel brought new underground platforms on 14 June 2014.

The route heads southeast through the Rhine valley, following lines 631, 641, and 721 toward the canton of Graubünden. At Landquart, the standard-gauge line is joined by the metre-gauge Rhaetian Railway, which has run parallel along these 13.68 kilometres into Chur since 1896. The journey ends at Chur station, opened on 30 June 1858 and rebuilt between 1926 and 1928 to accommodate growing traffic. Today it serves as the principal railway junction in Graubünden, receiving both SBB standard-gauge trains from Zürich and Rhaetian Railway metre-gauge services — among them the Glacier Express — on tracks raised to Switzerland's standard platform height of 55 cm during redevelopment completed in 2003. The contrast between Zürich's layered urban infrastructure and Chur's dual-gauge alpine junction captures the range this relatively short corridor covers.