Trains to/from the Zürich Airport and the Zürich Hauptbahnhof originate and terminate at St. Gallen station twice an hour with a travel time of 1 hr 10 min to Zürich. St. Gallen’s station is only a short walk (500 meters) from the Old Town and is surrounded by hotels, restaurants and shops. Sleds are rented there in winter.

St. Gallen is also the end station for Appenzeller Bahnen (AB), which is an amalgam of the former Trogenerbahn, the Rorschach-Heiden-Bergbahn, the Bergbahn Rheineck-Walzenhausen, and the former Appenzeller Bahnen, which began life in 1856 as the St. Gall-Appenzell Railway with a European gauge line between St. Gallen and Winterthur that later became part of the Swiss National Railway system.

The first typically AB line was built by the Appenzell Railway in 1888 between Appenzell and Urnäsch only a year after its founding. Four years later the Appenzell Streetcar Company (SFA) was founded with a line between St. Gallen and Gais. It 1904, SGA extended to the city of Appenzell. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the AB and SFA merged.

In the late 19th Century, plans and proposals bloomed for rail construction over the relative flat landscape that posed few engineering difficulties. This included Altstätten-Gais, St. Gallen-Appenzell, Gossau-Urnäsch-Appenzell, St. Gallen-Trogen, and Rheineck-Walzenhausen.

Engineers Riggenbach and Trogen proposed in 1871 a standard-gauge, cog-wheel line between the booming health resort of Heiden and the port of Rorschach on Lake Constance (Bodensee). In 1875, two steam locomotives pulling six passenger carriages began regular service over this scenic, 6 km/4 mi stretch that later attracted the first double-decked panoramic carriage by the Rhaetian Railways and, in 1938, the Red Arrow.

A combination of train and Swiss postal bus runs from St. Gallen or Appenzell to the foot of the Säntis (2,502 m/8,208 ft). The mountain can’t compete in altitude with the high Alps, but it is outstanding as the only one around. At the summit, one enjoys magnificent unobstructed views including Lake Zürich, the Ulm Cathedral in Germany, and Austrian Alps.

The Schwebebahn from Schwägalp (1352 meters) up to Säntis was opened in 1935. A Schwebebahn is sort of a train hanging down from rails. Heated, panoramic, 85-passenger cabins run every 30 minutes and take 10 minutes up the face of a nearly vertical cliff to the large station atop the Säntis. Schwägalp, can be reached in one hour from St. Gallen or Appenzell by trains to Nesslau-Neu St. Johann or Urnäsch and then by Swiss Postal Bus. Atop the Säntis, there are restaurants, shops, exhibits and a 113 m/371 ft tower with tons of instruments for every electronic communications device that scientists have and will devise, but no one lives there. The building itself extends 11 stories underground.

Ebenalp (1640 m/5,381 ft) is another belvedere of the mountain chain. Trains from Appenzell to Wasserauen take visitos to the foot of the cable car lift to the summit, where signs guide to hiking paths.

Interesting sights
Lake Constance steamers call at Canton St. Gallen’s port of Rorschach for lake crossings to Austria and Germany. The region’s cogwheel train climbs from Rorschach to Heiden, the former health resort on a sunny plateau, where Swiss Postal Buses continue to Walzerhauzen, for the mountain train descending back to Rorschach.

Find out more about historic trains from the Swiss Federal Railway Heritage Foundation.