Can you buy snow n rail tickets from Zurich:

a- in advance at Zurich HB ticket counters (ie the preceeding week for a Saturday trip) or on the morning only?

b- online ? (Seems not)

thanks to anyone that knows :-)

Yes you can buy them in advance from the counter.

Last season they also started selliong them from the ticket machines without you having to queue.

Not sure about on-line but it looks like you are correct and you can't.

Use Snow n Rail 4 times in the season and if you keep the tickets and send them off they'll send you a free ski bag.
http://railaway.rail.ch/english/snow...loyal-are-you/


Cheers,
Higgy Baby

I just checked and you can now use the ticket machines to buy Snow n Rail tickets again this season.
The machine defaults to you travelling 2nd class and owning a 1/2 tax card so if you haven't got one you need to edit the selection to 1/1 (no half tax).
It also defaults to today's date so you need to edit the date for advanced tickets and for multiple days if staying over.
Quite simple to use, and available at all train stations (incl unstaffed ones).

They don't usualy appear on the ticket machines till the season starts.

I'm hoping they add them to the SBB app.

Season just started!

Yes I saw it today, so it's officially ski season. Cowabunga.

What's "the SBB app" ????
The website ticketing or a phone app ?

If you search for snow or snow n rail on the SBB website you won't get a link to snow n rail.
You have to go to Railaway mini site
http://railaway.sbb.ch/

Whatever you print out at home has to be compatible with ski resorts all over Switzerland that don't all use the same equipment / recognise bar codes etc. You still have to queue at the resort for your ski pass.

I guess if you are going by train anyway, there's no hardship with printing out tickets at the train station apart from having to be there ten mins earlier.

The iPhone app. It's great.

Snow and rail gets complicated if you use the bus to get to the railway station.

I presume you have to ask the bus driver for a return ticket to the last train stop within the Zurich area zone and then buy the ski and rail ticket at the machine from this station to the resort.

Otherwise, you would pay extra if you bought the bus ticket and then the train ticket when, effectively, the bus ticket is included within the price of the train ticket as it's within the zone covered by the rail ticket.

What I've been doing is jumping on the bus without a ticket and then buying the snow-and-rail ticket at the railway station but I'm travelling on the bus without a valid ticket even if I'm not effectively paying any less.

What's the solution? (If you can understand what I'm trying to do).

If you feel comfortable explaining that in German to a bus conductor, go for it, otherwise i reckon you're toast.

By my reading, no, it's not:

http://railaway.sbb.ch/english/gener...n-snow-n-rail/

It's a point-to-point rail ticket (i.e. valid from one railway station to another), not a CityTicket or a ticket within a tarifverbund (i.e. a ZVV zonal fare if you're in Kanton Zürich). Not all SBB-issued tickets within the ZVV are ZVV tickets. I'd say look forward to an 80Fr fine if you hear the magic words "grüezi mitenand, billettekontrolle!" on the bus and don't have a ticket valid for that bus - "I swear, I was going to buy a ticket later" isn't likely to cut the mustard..

For zurich zone 10 we buy 'multi trip' tickets online and have them posted to our house, so we don't have to tackle the bus driver

Gets us from home to the HB and there are short trip or 24 hours, so we usually buy a couple of each on pay day...they don't expire and the buses have swipe machines...

Jumping on the bus without a ticket was so last year.

Snow and rail isn't difficult to understand.

But ignoring that for a moment and just considering that you want to get to a place with a railway station.

Getting a bus from house A to station B and then a train from station B to station D is more expensive if you buy a bus ticket from A to B and a train ticket from B to D than if you bought a bus/train ticket from A to C and a train ticket from C to D.
And, the key is, to know where C is.

I wondered if this was the same for snow and rail?

i.e. buy a bus/train ticket from house A to station C (via station B) and then a snow and rail ticket from station C to station D.

There may be no price differential but I'm going to find out and let you know.

Getting a snow & rail ticket from your point of origin will always be cheaper. However problem is to buy one on the spot at a bus station.

You can try buying in advance at a train station and give your point of origin, then using it another day to start your journey.

Looks to me like the key point here is that Snow'n'Rail tickets have the rail fare portion discounted at 30% (according to the web). Let's check this out given a sample fare from Zürich HB to Davos Platz:

Return fare (2. Class) - Fr51.00 with halbtax, Fr102.00 without.
Snow'n'Rail fare (2. Class) - Fr89.40 with halbtax, Fr125.00 without.

Looking at the fare differentials, this suggests that the rail fare portion is Fr35.60 each way, which matches the 30% discount. That would *probably* be hard to beat, but looking at the fare from somewhere on the fringes of the ZVV, say, Pfäffikon SZ - Fr41/82 (with/without 1/2 abo). Fr10 difference relative to the fare from Zürich means it'd only be worth doing if you were going to travel more than 5 zones across the ZVV to get there.

The deciding part is probably that if you're on a journey that crosses the boundary of the ZVV or another fare union and plan to use two tickets to cover this, the ZVV (TNW, etc) ticket is only valid as far as the last *timetabled stop* within the ZVV area for the train you're taking. So for instance, if you're travelling from Zürich-Davos via Landquart, you'll need a ticket from Zürich HB anyway if you're on an IC as the first stop is Sargans. Take an IR and the last stop in the ZVV is Pfäffikon.