About this journey

Zürich Hauptbahnhof, where this journey begins, traces its origins to 9 August 1847, when the Spanisch-Brötli-Bahn — the first railway built entirely within Switzerland — opened its terminus here, linking the city with Baden. The station's infrastructure has evolved considerably since then: the original tracks were laid to a gauge of 1,600 mm before being regauged to the standard 1,435 mm in 1853, and electrification across all routes was completed by 1927. Today the station operates across three principal levels and receives up to 2,915 trains per day.

The route runs southwest from Zürich on line 151, joining line 142 toward Bern. At the far end of the journey, Bern station itself opened progressively between 1858 and 1860 as part of the Mittellandlinie, where the Olten–Bern and Lausanne–Bern lines converge. Services here are shared between SBB, BLS, and the metre-gauge Regionalverkehr Bern-Solothurn. A major expansion — a new underground station and pedestrian underpass approved in 2017, with a projected cost of CHF 614 million — is expected to be complete by 2029, meaning the station the Traverso arrives at is itself mid-transformation, much like the one it departed.