Fodor's Travel Talk Forums

The SBB website can’t give you fares for journeys that are not wholly within Switzerland. You can send them an e-mail and they will send back a quote, or you can call them and ask. You might try the treinitalia.com, I don’t know that they give quotes on the website for intra-country trips either.

You can also try to look at RailEurope and see their prices; if you don’t buy from them, the fare most likely will be a little (or maybe even substantially) cheaper.

To see the route and the stops, go Swiss Rail website at rail.ch, and on the schedule page, put in “Modena” as the start, and “Zurich HB” as the end, “22.8.07” as your departure date and “08:00” as the departure time. Hit “search connection”. A few train options will come up. Scroll down to any connection you are interested in, and click on “Show intermediate stops”. That will show you all the stops the train will make. With a map, you can then see the route the train will be taking on the journey.

From the rail.ch site, I see that the fastest trip with the least connections, which is what I assume you want, takes just under 6 hours and requires one change in Milan. This train departs at 8:59 am. I have done this journey from Bologna to Zurich a few times. Much of it is quite scenic, esp the area after Bellinzona where you will get some nice if brief views of Lake Come and then some good Alps views. The parts between Modena and almost until Milan will be interesting as well, no high mountains, a bit drier countryside, but still pretty rolling farmlands and vineyards.

Due to the mountains, there really is no other alternative route you can take, unless you want to take something like the Bernina Express from Tirano, or a bus up to the St Moritz area and then on to Zurich. All these are possible, but will add considerable time to your journey from Modena. For example, you could get from Modena to St Mortiz via the Bernina Express train in about 7 hours, but then you have about another 3 hours by train to go on to Zurich. The Bernina Express part is quite spectacular, but I understand (but have not done), that the ride between Milan and Tirano (about 2 hours) is not that scenic. I will say that IMO the journey from St Mortiz to Zurich is also one of the great train rides in Switzerland, esp the first 1.5 hours or so. How much time do you have, and are you interseted in stopping off onvernight or longer in any area. IMO to go all the way to St Mortiz and not spend any time there may be kind of a waste of a journey as the area is so beautiful. For information on the Bernina Express, go to rhb.ch.

If you want to call Swiss Rail for fares, the number is number is 011-41-900-300-300, press 4 for English. They have English speaking operators. Switzerland is 6 hours ahead of EST and I believe the line is staffed from about 8 am to 5 pm or later Swiss time.