Today’s journey led me all the way to Germany. Turns out, it’s not very far…
From Zurich, I rode the train to Waldshut via Baden, where I spent some time at the Rhein. It was a very lovely spot right next to the river. On the way back, I completed the rail lines to Bülach and then onward to Winterthur.
Today, I took the long way from Zurich to St. Gallen, taking the train up to Schaffhausen and then following the S1 all the way along the Bodensee. It’s quite a nice route.
On the way back one of the stops was Aadorf, which I found quite funny as when talking about illustrative scenarios in the railway context (e.g. for interlockings, or generally the train operation procedures), we often use Adorf and Bstadt as examples. That A(a)dorf exists in real life is quite ironic.
Today I traveled a bit on the S-Bahn Zurich. Starting at Zurich HB, I first took the S6 to Uetikon, followed by the S7 to Rapperswil, completing the route along the Goldküste. After a short hop to Rüti ZH, I rode the S26 all the way to Winterthur, completing the first S-Bahn line around Zurich. It’s quite a nice route.
From Winterthur, the S24 brought me up to Thayngen, crossing off the northern most train station in Switzerland. Back in Schaffhausen, I then rode the S9 all the way to Uster, completing the second S-Bahn in Zurich and also completing my day of riding random trains around Zurich.
Today, I ticked off a large section of the network of the Appenzeller Bahnen. Starting in St. Gallen, I made my way to Trogen, where I immediately turned around on the same train to get to the other end of the S21. On the map there was a short section branching off from the S21, from Gais to Altstätten Stadt. I didn’t think much of it, but as it looked like a short detour which I could do while I was there anyways, I decided to go to Altstätten for Dinner.
Now in the S24, once we passed Stoss AR I was very surprised when the train turned out to be a cog railway and we made our way slowly into the valley. It was a very lovely view across the area around Altstätten SG and the cog railway was very cool to ride. I was aware of other cog railways in the area, e.g. the S25 and S26, but not having researched the routes much, the S24 was a nice little surprise.
After dinner, I made my way back up the hill with the last train of the day, continuing to Appenzell and then back towards Zurich via Gossau SG. I have now already completed two lines (S21, S24) and one is almost complete (S23), only missing the part between Appenzell and Wasserauen, for which I was too late in the day. According to my tracking sheet, I have now already visited 24.6% of the stations in Eastern Switzerland and 3.2% overall.
To keep track of the stations I have visited I am using an amazing site called viaduct. In addition, I have now created a spreadsheet to make some custom diagrams and statistics. You can find some diagrams here.
Luckily, the federal office of transport provides a list of all stations in Switzerland as well as a list of all lines in Switzerland. As I am mostly interested in train stations and lines, I have filtered them accordingly. I still keep track of the other stations and lines out of interest, but I don’t expect to make much progress on them.
After filtering, we are left with 1’738 train stations and 385 train lines. So I just have to visit 4.76 stations per day on average, in order to visit them all within a year.
For a train station to count I just need to have been on a train which stops at that station. For lines I distinguish between having traveled on a line and having „completed“ a line. For traveling I just need to ride a train running on the line at least one stop. To complete a line, I need to travel the whole line from start to finish, on a train designated with that line number. This doesn’t need to be in one go, this can be interrupted and completed with multiple journeys. Completing a line is mostly a side quest, but might still be fun to do.
The train stations and all the lines are also split into 11 different regions so I can keep track of my progress for each one individually.
The spreadsheet would allow me to also track bus and tram stations, but as there are 23’973 of them in Switzerland, I don’t think I’ll make much progress on them and I might not bother keeping track of all of them. We’ll see.
Today I started my project of visiting all stations in Switzerland by traveling from Rorschach to Zurich. Though because I took the IC 5 I am still missing all the smaller stations in between and will have to go again at a later date with the S-Bahn. But I wanted to immediately get started on the first day where my GA is valid :).
Visited stations: Rorschach, St. Gallen, Winterthur, Zürich Flughafen, Zürich HB.
