Top Five Reasons Why The Swiss Rail System Rules

1. It's fully integrated
While the Swiss Federal Railways is the largest train operator in the country, it shares its tracks with various regional rail systems, suburban commuter trains, private and tourist railways, and international trains from foreign countries. For the average passenger, there's no difference between any of these trains. Your ticket is good for passage between two specific points regardless of what train shows up. Timetables on the Swiss Federal Railways website incorporate all these different services and even include mountain funicular and cable car systems. What you see is what you get, and no second thoughts are necessary.

1a. The Swiss Pass is the world's best train ticket
As a result of the fully-integrated transit system, you can purchase a Swiss Pass for 255 CHF (about US$189) which gives you unlimited rides for four days on just about every public train line in the country, whether run by the Swiss Federal Railways or some other regional operator. It also gives you access to long-distance bus lines, urban public transit in some forty cities, certain trans-border rail lines, boat lines, many private rail lines, and even aerial cable cars. The only exceptions are tourist-based funiculars, cog railways, and cable cars, all of which offer a 50% discount when you use your Swiss Pass. For someone who rides the train as much as I do, the flexibility offered was amazing. Given the high prices of Swiss train travel, the Swiss Pass offered a spectacular value.

2. It goes everywhere
Whatever town in Switzerland you want to visit, there's train service that goes there. Large mountain ranges in the way prove no problem, no matter what the season. And we're not talking diesel locomotives making their way across remote sections of rail. The entire system is fully electrified, even as it climbs over 2000m above sea level. When you're going through the mountains, you get a pretty scenic ride, at the price of a regular passenger ticket.

3. There's a train leaving soon
We're not talking Amtrak here, where you get one departure a day. Anywhere you want to go in Switzerland, there's a departure pretty much every hour between 5 a.m. and midnight. For trains between bigger cities, you might have departures every half hour, or even more frequently, if you're willing to put up with a local train. Yeah, you might have to make a transfer or two along the way, if you heading to or from smaller cities, but even transfers are times so that you're rarely waiting more than ten minutes.

4. The stations are amazing
Not only are stations clean and well-maintained, they're well marked, with numerous signs displaying the station name and graphics directing you to the various facilities at the station. Stations always have a manned ticket booth where you can ask questions of a live person, just in case you can't handle the touchscreen computer terminals where you can purchase tickets. There are luggage lockers, convenience stores, and restrooms in pretty much every station. There are also signboards that display, for each train, the time of departure, the destination and intermediate stops, and the location of first and second class cars.

5. It's always on time -- always
The Swiss Railways have a reputation for always running on time, and it's true. In my four days of near-nonstop train riding, there were two trains that ran late, and one of them was a train that came in from Germany. The signboards display if a train is running late. A three-minute delay is a big deal to the Swiss. You literally can set your watch by the trains' departures.