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I am looking to book train from Interlaken to Winterthur Switzerland.  All trips for May 6 and 7, 2023 are coming up like this:

 

07:00

INTERLAKEN OST (Switzerland)

2h 29m

IC 809

Intercity

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You're ready to board

You can buy a seat reservation if you like but it's not required.

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No price results were found. Pass holder reservations may be sold out for this connection, but there are other ways to check for available seats—more info below our timetable.

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09:29

WINTERTHUR (Switzerland)

 

Any help on how I can book this train trip or is the train not running on Saturday and Sundays? Do I need to book directly with the train company itself on the weekends? 

 

Thank you so much in advance for any help you can give.

Relax, sit back, no worries. It is just as it says: you do NOT need any RES-you only need, on the day, NOT now, to register the trips and create, if you hold such a pass, a passtravelday. And board and find a seat to your liking. If you oversleep or BF comes not fast: trains run ev hour to same mins, so also no worries-can take any later. Just as on the LIRR or CalTrain-noone in the Swiss bothers for RES and all that cumbersome. Like in fact applies to about 95% of all trains that run here in EUR. That is for large groups-boyscouts, the village housewifes on their outing or the like. That is also one of the joys of these passes-use them with just a little more knowledge and routes for that and its all done-but it seems all those from over the wide oceans only want to ride those trains that are the most difficult to organise.

Also it is usually best to use the planner sites of the railways you actually use for best advice-here that is SBB.com. Next best is bahn.com which coves about all of EUR and is much more frequently updated as this app. And do not be too much surprised if in some cases times will not even show for may: then you are too early not too late.

There is no need at all to make reservations for trains in Switzerland unless you travel with the scenic trains that have mandatory reservations.  

I was born in Switzerland and have travelled a lot by train there and I don't even know how to make a seat reservation. 

There are construction works going on between Interlaken and Spiez that day so there are replacement busses to Spiez. However, I recommend you to travel via Luzern over the Brünnig Pass to Winterthur instead of going the route via Spiez and Bern.

 

The Panorama Express on this route does not require reservation.

 

The Eurail website or the Railplanner app are not reliable for detailed planning. They are not online and the information there is not seldom wrong. There are better ways for planning and reservations. Please read more about that in my next reply.

 

 

 

Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days. 

 Planning

The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries. 

 Reservations 

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website.  You can look at the guide in the link:

https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105

If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.

Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.

 Activation of pass

During the activation process you choose the start day of the validity of the pass. Once the validity has started it can't be changed even if you haven't travelled. The advice is therefore to wait with activating the pass and starting the validity until the first day of your travel as you only can deactivate the pass no later than 23.59 CET on the day before the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you can't deactivate the pass and change the validity. 

It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.

 Activation of travel day

The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass and create the ticket (QR code), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage  You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.

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