European Railroad Discussion > Travel to Lausanne and then Bernia Express travel questions

I need to attend a conferece in Lausanne in April.  Conference ends on a Friday and we plan to head to St. Mortiza and Tirano on Saturday.  Last time we tried this, one of my clients called with rush work so we spent all weekend in St. Moritz before head back to Zurich and then Frankfurt (client's rush work paid for much of the trip).  Rough plan is travel to St. Mortiz on post conference day 1.  Day two would be travel to Tirano and spend overnight in Tirano.  Day 4 would be return to St. Mortiz.  Day 6 would be to travel to Zurich and Day 7 back to Frankfurt.  Is this reasonable?

Thank you,

John

Hi,

This sounds reasonable, however You would start the Glacier Express in Brig (and not Zermatt - which would be a deatour requiring a night in Zermatt -- very expensive...)

Below an experpt of the timetable.

By thy way, I'm hosting the St. Moritz' library image database with a lot of historic fotos of the Albula line :-)
See http://www.salsah.org/dokubib/, and go for WIRTSCHAFT-EISENBAHNEN

Have fun,

Lukas
P.S. I'm the head of the Digital Humanities Lab in Basel – historic foto collections are one of my scientific interest :-)


Lausanne Dept. 08:21
Brig arr. 10:02
Brig dept. 10:18
St. Moritz arr. 17:03 (5:03 pm)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/07/16 15:15 by rosenth.

Thank you very much.  The last time we made the trip (2013), the meeting was in Geneva, and we made train and hotel reservations through the SBB travel office in Geneva.  Suspect we were on similar SBB  train as you listed, and we changed to the Glacier Express at Visp.  On the return trip we took the Rhätische Bahn to Chur and SBB to Zurich.  

I enjoyed the pictures in your photo collection.

John

DocJohn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I need to attend a conferece in Lausanne in
> April.  Conference ends on a Friday and we plan
> to head to St. Mortiza and Tirano on Saturday. 
> Last time we tried this, one of my clients called
> with rush work so we spent all weekend in St.
> Moritz before head back to Zurich and then
> Frankfurt (client's rush work paid for much of the
> trip).  Rough plan is travel to St. Mortiz on
> post conference day 1.  Day two would be travel
> to Tirano and spend overnight in Tirano.  Day 4
> would be return to St. Mortiz.  Day 6 would be to
> travel to Zurich and Day 7 back to Frankfurt.  Is
> this reasonable?
>
> Thank you,
>
> John

You could do that--or you could transfer to a Trenord train in Tirano and continue over to either Lecco (nice town on Lake Como) or Milan (and spend the evening riding old Peter Witt streetcars). The next day you could either head straight up to Zürich on the Gotthard route (bearing in mind that the Gotthard Base Tunnel is set to open later this year, so it's one of the last chances to experience the old line with 100% of the traffic) or catch the Ferrovie Autolinee Regionali Ticinesi (yes, its unfortunate acronym is FART) from Locarno to Domodossola -- a spectacular ride in its own right) and continue back up north via Lötschberg pass.

Plenty of options -- you can't go wrong!

I am traveling from Zurich to Milano the first week of October with a planned stopover in Lugano. I want to go over (not under) the Gotthard Pass. Given the opening of the base tunnel in June what suggestions do those of you with knowledge of the lines have for me? Is there an alternate routing that could include both the Gotthard Pass and the Glacier Express? My travel dates are Oct 1-5.

Wheelclix Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am traveling from Zurich to Milano the first
> week of October with a planned stopover in Lugano.
> I want to go over (not under) the Gotthard Pass.

Whatever standard gauge railway you go on you will go under the Gotthard Pass, it's whether you go through the new base tunnel or through the older Gotthard Tunnel. From Goschenen, the northern entance to the existing Gotthard Tunnel, you can get a narrow gauge train to Andermatt where you can pick up the Glacier Express. Suggest you buy a copy of the European Timetable to get actual train times.

http://www.europeanrailtimetable.eu/