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I am planning a trip from Montreux to Lucerne with a stop at Interlaken to venture to Murren. I am wondering if I can book Golden Pass from Montreal to Zweisimmen with a VIP seat but when switching trains to proceed to Interlaken ( spending a few nights) and then to Lucerne can I take the regular eurotrain ? Or when purchasing a pass, I must proceed thru the whole distance using a Golden Pass? My question also is … is it cheaper switching to regular rail since I will already have a eurail pass due to further vacationing in other countries. Is this possible or not? Thank you .
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Hello kschrmack and Welcome to MySwissAlps,
The Golden Pass Line (http://www.myswissalps.com/go ldenpass) is a train route. The Panoramic trains (with VIP seats) run from Montreux to Zweisimmen. All the rest of the legs on the route are serviced by regular trains.
You need to reserve VIP seats but the actual train ticket is covered by your Eurail Pass irrespective of whether you are on a Panoramic train or a regular train.
You can make reservations for the Golden Pass Line (http://www.myswissalps.com/go ldenpass/tickets) including seat selection at bit.ly/2kaq6Rf. Click the “e” for English language top right of the page. (where it says “Sprachwahl: d i f e”). Then change the class of travel, date of travel and start/end points to suit. Not all trains have VIP seats.
Oh and yes, you can take as long as you like to traverse the Golden Pass Line from start to finish. Just note that if you break the journey between Montreux and Zweisimmen and want to resume in VIP seats you would need reservations for each train.
Thank you for your help. Now I have a better understanding . I did not find the ” words” you said to switch to English . Another question….. or two , traveling from Montreux to Lucerne should we sit on the left side of the train for the best view since it says when traveling the opposite direction it is best to sit on the right . I saw somewhere on the site that the VIP seat is under renovation and not available after Sept 2018 . Our trip is planned for May 2019 and I could not bring up the page that talks about the VIP renovation plan. THANK YOU AGAIN.
Hi Kschrmack,
Our suggestions for where to sit can be found on the Golden Pass page: http://www.myswissalps.com/go ldenpass/gettingthere.
The VIP coaches are indeed being renovated. I’m not sure when they’re back, I haven’t seen news about that yet.
The VIP seats are forward facing, so the question of which side to sit is irrelevant!
First of all, I love the predictive text (?) that changed Montreux to Montreal
The Golden Pass rail route:
Current tourist branding can be confusing
The true Goldenpass is just the MOB railway Zweisimmen – Montreux.
The Luzern – Interlaken railway is actually the Brünig Pass line operated by Zentralbahn (ZB), which dubs the regular trains “Luzern – Interlaken Express’. It’s OK but not spectacular scenery
A few facts about the Montreux – Zweisimmen railway – ie the MOB (Montreux-Oberland – Bernois):
The Golden Pass is historically only Montreux – Zweisimmen, only more recent marketing branding takes the ‘Goldenpass route’ east of Zweisimmen to Interlaken and beyond to Luzern.
The Golden Pass is the touristic branding for the Montreux – Oberland Bernois (MOB) railway but after a few years of favouring ‘Goldenpass services’, the company decided it was losing its tradition and has reverted to putting the Chemin de Fer Montreux – Oberland Bernois name on publicity and train coaches.
MOB pioneered the Panoramic coach concept on Swiss trains, starting in 1976.
There are now several versions of panoramic coaches in service, but MOB keeps changing its mind how to dub each service.
It hardly matters anyway as most modern Swiss trains have large windows, even if not officially panoramic. The key element of a ‘panoramic’ coach is ‘toplight’ windows above your head but in practice very few of the major views from panoramic trains are directly above your head, so the view through the normal side part of windows is normally fine.
You will get roughly the same scenic experience form any train on the MOB and reservation is not obligatory
Here is the timetable PDF for the MOB:
http://www.fahrplanfelder.ch/ fileadmin/fap_pdf_fiel ds/2019/120.pdf
It is very scenic, but the MOB route is far from being the most spectacular (although any dubbing of this nature is going to subjective and personal) in Switzerland.
Thank you so much for your posts. This surely helps since unless you can visualize it , you can not wrap your mind around the whole set up . This helps with my planning. Thank you .
Do you have any info on when the VIP-seat-equipped trains will be back in service 1960man?
But no VIP seats until 2020 apparently 🙁
Thank you to all who have helped me plan my get away , although it got me thinking that I MAY change my plans after getting more information ( thanks to you ) . We may reverse our country hopping and decide to travel from Venice. What is more scenic or advisable ……Traveling from Venice to Lucerne and traveling down to Interlaken , or Venice to Interlaken . Not sure how scenic or worthwhile Lucerne to Interlaken is compared to straight to Interlaken.Thank you for any insight.
I’m not sure it makes a great deal of difference. A more important factor may be where you are exiting Switzerland so that you can plan your travels to end up there at the end of your tour.
There are many options. Traveling via Lucerne could be done on the Gotthard Panorama Express and then part of the Golden Pass line. You could also travel via Locarno and the Centovalli line:
Great , thank you
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