St Moritz is linked to the rest of Switzerland by train via the Swiss town of Chur, a two-hour ride, and also to Milan and Munich. More...

The famous Glacier Express excursion train runs between St Moritz and Zermatt. Buses also connect St Moritz with Chur, Lugano and Pontresina.

Forget cars! The Swiss Travel System, as it is aptly termed, includes trains, buses, boats, ferries, funiculars and other means of moving you around. They're all linked, they're all superbly organized, and they all run on time, as you might expect.

Go to the Swiss Travel System website and you'll discover that the heart of the system is the Swiss Federal Railways, known by its initials SBB (German), CFF (French) and FFS (Italian). Buy a Swiss Pass to take advantage of this superb system at a value-for-money price.

The system is better organized than any other travel system I've ever seen. You can get timetables for any route on any combination of cities, print them out or download them to your PDA... It's simply incredible.

Trains, buses and boats are frequent, comfortable, punctual and safe.

Wow! It's simply incredible! Why bother with a car when the trains are this good?

Why is it so good? Well, it's not just the Swiss talent for organization and punctuality. Switzerland is a small, mountainous country that came of age well before the advent of the automobile. Its mountainous topography dictates that many of its travel routes must go along river valleys, so when railroads were all the rage in the 19th century, the Swiss built railroads all along these valleys. They even tackled the mountains, taking the trains around, up, down and even right through the rock!

Soon the entire country was knitted together by good trains. When the internal combustion engine became all the rage in the 20th century, the Swiss added postbuses—fast public buses that also carried the mail—following routes that were better served by road than train.

Glacier Express Excursion Train

Trains between Zürich and St Moritz