Race Against The Clock - Part I

Race Against The Clock - Part I

Do you remember the casual mention of a challenge in Johnny Harris’s YouTube documentary? Here it is.

The Swiss Train Challenge (https://swisstrainchallenge.jimdosite.com/) 

The 26 Canton Challenge is an epic geography and endurance feat where participants must set foot in all 26 Swiss cantons of Switzerland in as little time as possible, using only public transportation. The current speed record is 16 hours and 39 minutes as per the website. ‘Using only public transportation’ was what got me going. Why not try it? People who went for the record spent months preparing as teams. 

Five days. That's what I'd given myself. Evenings hunched over a spreadsheet and the SBB app https://www.sbb.ch/en , refeeding routes, deleting branches, restarting the moment a connection looked too tight. By the fourth night I had a shape I trusted. Not for a world record but a good enough personal challenge for myself.

I started with a couple of handicaps though. I had to start from home in Morges but it sits in the middle of one of the major routes.  And of course, I wanted to get back to bed, so I had to double back all the way. And for that I had to find the last train home. I knew I could not do all 26 cantons with this personal constraint but I still set eyes on 24. 

I had packed a small bag of essentials - water, charger, a book, a couple of sandwiches, a power bank (which i never got to use) and of course some money and the Forex card the previous night itself. We had got back from Belgium at about 11.30 pm and I desperately needed 3-4 hrs of sleep before this adventure.

I had got up at 4.05 am, after the first buzz of the alarm, careful not to wake up my wife. Then, in stealth and in the light of my mobile made myself some hot black coffee which kickstarted my day. Freshened up and quietly slipped out of the apartment.

And on 17th July 2026 at 4.47 am, I took the first regional train RE 33 out from Morges. It was extremely pleasant with a light breeze blowing my dry grey hair. I started taking some pics and videos to record my attempt. The train arrived in time and my first leg to Lausanne started and there I changed to the  Inter-Regional train IR 95  to St Maurice in Valais Canton. And guess what? The train was already delayed by 4 minutes! So much for Swiss timings, I thought to myself. 

The route is along Lake Geneva and follows the outline of the shores nearly all the way through. Looking out of the large windows of the train as the dawn rose, I saw the highest reaches of the French Alps being lit golden by the first rays of the sun hitting it, while the valley in which I was travelling lay still in darkness, just waking up.

As I stepped on to the Platform, I realised I had stepped reached the 2nd Canton of the day, since Morges in Vaud Canton, I had already counted as my first. A quick changeover of 5 mins at St Maurice, in the adjacent platform, and I was retracing the route all the way back to Vevey, where I hurriedly stepped out and ran across to Platform 4EH to catch another regional train to Palezieux pronounced as pah-lay-zyuh. I used to call it Pa-Ley-Zee-Ux :-) 

The route was beautiful with rolling hills on both sides. We can actually feel the train climbing slightly and then rolling down. It could send one to sleep but I had to stay awake. The scenery kept changing with small villages on both sides and large tracts of land, totally green and interspersed with bald patches of brown earth, where it has been harvested. 

It all starts with super excitement but a couple of hours into the journey. It starts becoming boring. The scenery just keeps changing, but over a period of time even that looks just the same. 

The 59 min train journey from Palezieux to Bern on the IR 15, had me doing the first hop-on hop-off at Fribourg station. Canton 3 ticked off. I bit leisurely into the couple of Paprika Cream Cheese sandwich which I had made for myself the previous evening and followed it with gulps of water. Remaining hydrated was necessary. And that is when I did what I carried on through the day — put my phone on charge. Though not technically advisable, it was essential since with a dead phone one could find oneself lost.

Got down at Bern and ran across from Platform 2 to Platform 12AC in a quick 4 min changeover in a large station and jumped into the First Class coach and found my seat for a short 36 min ride to Biel / Bienne. As I was running, I also realised that Canton 4 (Bern) was done. The announcement over the train PA system told me that I was in a different part of the country. The western part of Switzerland is French-speaking, so all announcements in the train come in French and English. As we go further north, the announcements convert to German and English. At Bern, the announcement was in three languages - German, French, and English. Later in the day, I would get an opportunity to hear an announcement in Italian too.

I took a leisurely walk in Biel / Bienne station, bought myself a hot cup of coffee and then proceeded to Platform 2 to catch the Inter-Regio 56 to Basel SBB. And perhaps this was one of the most amazing part of my journey today. I ticked off four cantons in this one journey while seeing some of the most scenic places in the north-western part of Switzerland. I jumped off in the platforms of Grenchen Nord (Solothurn Canton), Delémont  (Jura Canton), Laufen (Basel Landschaft Canton), got on in the same train and finally disembarked at Basel Main station (Basel Stadt Canton). Basel SBB is a big station but I had a 11 min changeover. So the pace slowed and then I got into the next train heading for Zurich.

This route hugs the German border with River Rhine being the dividing line. Throughout this journey my attention shifted from the landscape unfolding like picture postcards on one side to my trying to see if I could take a super quick detour to Schaffhausen Canton which was one that I would miss if I kept to my plan. But touching this canton could also upset the rest of my day and I could miss visiting 2 or 3 cantons. 

So I just stuck to my plan, got down at Baden station to tick off Aargau Canton and finally reached Zurich at 11.24 am. Wow! Six and a half hours and I was through with 10 cantons with Zurich being the 10th.

The next stretch up to 4 pm was going to be intense. I wanted to make sure I stepped actually on to a canton and not just pass through and in this route there were two towns - Wil and Ziegelbrucke, both border towns in St Gallen Canton but the adjacent canton boundaries of Thurgau and Glarus, passing tantalisingly close, maybe a few hundred metres away. But getting down at these stations would not count as touching those two cantons. So I had to take slightly slower trains which did stop in one of the stations within those cantons. 

I had a 22 min stopover at Zurich. After finding the location of Platform 43/44 in this humungous station, I strolled out of the complex and had a glimpse of the parts of the city close to the station including the Limmat river, took some pics and stepped back to catch the 11.46 am train to Wil with a change over at Winterthur. I could have taken an earlier train but it would not stop at Sirnach, which this train did and ticked off Canton 11 - Thurgau. 

From Wil (Canton 12- St Gallen) to Gossau was a 18 min ride and it brought me to another challenge of the day - the first of an out and back trip.  From Gossau, I had to go to the small village of Gonten, the first station in Appenzell Innerrhoden, my Canton 13. The train slowly zigzagged through the hillside with small houses adjacent to the track. It is a single track throughout other than at stations. 

Enroute, the village of Urnäsch lies in a long U-shaped curve on the track. The beauty is as one approaches Urnäsch, right across the valley one can see the bright red train from Appenzell making its way, as both trains snake towards each other to meet up at the Urnäsch station. And a few moments later, as they go their respective ways, the entire length of both trains are visible to each other all over again.  

The village of Gonten was my idea of a picture postcard Swiss village. Narrow gravel paths winding through fluorescent green grass leading up to small hills peppered with sloping roofed huts enjoying the warm summer sun. Hiking tracks could be sensed with a few people seen walking on those slopes. 

Gonten is a Stop on Request station, so if you want to get off the train, you have to press a button inside the coach of the train. There are two large buttons on the platform of the station which you need to press if you want to stop the train at Gonten to go either to Appenzell or back to Gossau. 

I lazily walked around the station area enjoying the silence of the valley till the sounds of the railway gates alarm went off and  I saw the my train back, worming through the hillsides towards me. I boarded the train, sat in my comfortable first class seat and returned to Herisau  in Appenzell Ausserrhoden which was Canton 14 in my trip, a station I had crossed just 30 mins back. 

From Herisau to Landquart, involved 2 changes, one at Uznach and the other one at Sargans and a quick step off and on at Muelehorn to check off Glarus, canton number 15 on my route. As I stepped off finally at Landquart in canton Graubunden (Canton Number 16)  at 4.11 pm, I had travelled for nearly 12 hrs and had completed 16 cantons…… 

Contd… Race Against The Clock - Part II