St Margrethen - Buchs, CH (rail replacement?) bus EV3 & Interrail

[jnjkerbin]

On Saturday 28th October, I need to travel from Wien to Chur, Switzerland. My initial plan was to take the Railjet through the Arlberg Pass to Buchs and change for an IR train to Chur. However, it seems there are multiple sets of engineering works on that date beteween Salzburg and Kufstein and between Ötztal and Bludenz (or Feldkirch, depending on who you believe), and although timetables don't seem to be confirmed yet, I'd rather avoid a lengthy trip on a RRB.

For that reason, I've been looking at alternative options and it seems I can either go

Wien - München ( - Stuttgart) - Zürich - Chur
or
Wien - München - St Margrethen - Buchs - Chur

The latter route is about an hour faster, but necessitates what seems to be another rail replacement bus EV3 between St Margrethen and Buchs. I'm not opposed to using this route since it's only 35 minutes on the bus, saves a decent amount of time, and I've already done the route from Zürich - Chur so am not too worried about seeing the scenic sections along the Zürichsee and Walensee again.

A few questions:

1) Is this bus actually a rail replacement bus? The fact it has route number seems strange to me, but maybe that's standard practice in Switzerland?
2) The Interrail app shows that bus as not being included on the pass, which seems strange if it is a rail replacement bus. Is that correct, and if so what's the best option for paying for that bus? Just a regular rail ticket purchased on the day?
3) Does anyone have any better suggestions for making this journey?

Thanks very much

 

[eastwestdivide]

EV in EV3 sounds very much like Ersatzverkehr or replacement transport, so you’d expect rail tickets to be valid. Perhaps they give them EV numbers to make it easier to get the right bus?

 

[dutchflyer]

Yes, these nrs just point you to what likely might be the direct ´express´ there may be #1,2 that also serve intermediate tiny stops.
You probably know that any valid rail ticket is also valid and that in practice there most likely is not even any check at all on that.
#2-that app very often shows wrong indicators-it seems they do not even expect any bus to take passes. If it really hinders youre registration, do it manually-or not at all. Interrail also has its own forum, hided as ´eurail´ were these things pop up regularly.

 

[Austriantrain]

On Saturday 28th October, I need to travel from Wien to Chur, Switzerland. My initial plan was to take the Railjet through the Arlberg Pass to Buchs and change for an IR train to Chur. However, it seems there are multiple sets of engineering works on that date beteween Salzburg and Kufstein and between Ötztal and Bludenz (or Feldkirch, depending on who you believe), and although timetables don't seem to be confirmed yet, I'd rather avoid a lengthy trip on a RRB.

For that reason, I've been looking at alternative options and it seems I can either go

Wien - München ( - Stuttgart) - Zürich - Chur
or
Wien - München - St Margrethen - Buchs - Chur

The latter route is about an hour faster, but necessitates what seems to be another rail replacement bus EV3 between St Margrethen and Buchs. I'm not opposed to using this route since it's only 35 minutes on the bus, saves a decent amount of time, and I've already done the route from Zürich - Chur so am not too worried about seeing the scenic sections along the Zürichsee and Walensee again.

A few questions:

1) Is this bus actually a rail replacement bus? The fact it has route number seems strange to me, but maybe that's standard practice in Switzerland?
2) The Interrail app shows that bus as not being included on the pass, which seems strange if it is a rail replacement bus. Is that correct, and if so what's the best option for paying for that bus? Just a regular rail ticket purchased on the day?
3) Does anyone have any better suggestionsl for making this journey?

Thanks very much

It definitely seems to be a RRB - the regular through trains seem to be cut short. It does make sense since there are works on the line to double-track it.

I would suggest going via Zurich. Be aware that the Munich - Zurich trains regularly are half an hour late, but since trains in Switzerland are so frequent, it’s not a big deal. The risk would rather seem to be missing the connection to the EC in Munich because of delays from Vienna.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Any local services Bregenz - Feldkirch and Feldkirch - Buchs still running to cut out the RRB?

 

[Flying Snail]

I used that bus earlier this year, it is run as a rail replacement. It required a manual entry into the interrail pass, I used it without any checks taking place, driver opened all doors and obviously had no interest in checking tickets.

The alternative route via Feldkirch didn't have good connections, at least not at the time I was travelling and I had come from Bregenz, from a (of course) late running DB train that had missed the Swiss connection.

 

[jnjkerbin]

Brilliant, thank you all for your very helpful advice!

 

[Austriantrain]

Any local services Bregenz - Feldkirch and Feldkirch - Buchs still running to cut out the RRB?

Should both be running. It adds additional changes though.

 

[Oscar]

1) Is this bus actually a rail replacement bus? The fact it has route number seems strange to me, but maybe that's standard practice in Switzerland?
The line is closed for double-tracking until 29 October.
See here
for more information (in German): https://company.sbb.ch/de/ueber-die...-ostschweiz/doppelspurausbau-im-rheintal.html
There are different routes with different stopping patterns, EV1, EV2 and EV3. Under Fahrplanänderungen 27. Februar - 29. Oktober
- Downloads - Herunterladen (link above), you can open a schematic map indicating the stops.
2) The Interrail app shows that bus as not being included on the pass, which seems strange if it is a rail replacement bus. Is that correct, and if so what's the best option for paying for that bus? Just a regular rail ticket purchased on the day?
The bus is included in the pass.
3) Does anyone have any better suggestions for making this journey?
Note that the München Hbf - Zürich HB service usually arrives late in St. Margrethen, and if the delay is more than three minutes (a couple of years ago when the new timetable was introduced, this the case 2/3 of the time), it loses its fast path between St. Margrethen and Zürich and will be at least about 25 minutes late at Zürich HB. As others have said, you could travel from Bregenz to Feldkirch and from there through Liechtenstein either by bus or by train to Buchs.

 

[rvdborgt]

2) The Interrail app shows that bus as not being included on the pass

That is completely irrelevant. Any information from that app should be handled with care and only means "this might be the case". This app should never be used for any planning.

 

[Djahawes]

On Saturday 28th October, I need to travel from Wien to Chur, Switzerland. My initial plan was to take the Railjet through the Arlberg Pass to Buchs and change for an IR train to Chur. However, it seems there are multiple sets of engineering works on that date beteween Salzburg and Kufstein and between Ötztal and Bludenz (or Feldkirch, depending on who you believe), and although timetables don't seem to be confirmed yet, I'd rather avoid a lengthy trip on a RRB.

For that reason, I've been looking at alternative options and it seems I can either go

Wien - München ( - Stuttgart) - Zürich - Chur
or
Wien - München - St Margrethen - Buchs - Chur

The latter route is about an hour faster, but necessitates what seems to be another rail replacement bus EV3 between St Margrethen and Buchs. I'm not opposed to using this route since it's only 35 minutes on the bus, saves a decent amount of time, and I've already done the route from Zürich - Chur so am not too worried about seeing the scenic sections along the Zürichsee and Walensee again.

A few questions:

1) Is this bus actually a rail replacement bus? The fact it has route number seems strange to me, but maybe that's standard practice in Switzerland?
2) The Interrail app shows that bus as not being included on the pass, which seems strange if it is a rail replacement bus. Is that correct, and if so what's the best option for paying for that bus? Just a regular rail ticket purchased on the day?
3) Does anyone have any better suggestions for making this journey?

Thanks very much

Hi.
It’s Wed 25th Oct 2023 and we have just done virtually the same journey as this. We left Salzburg 06.00, changed in Munich for the 08.55 direction Zurich, but decided to try the EV3 bus from St Margrethen to Buchs. It’s absolutely fine.
The train from Munich (as predicted) delayed by 15mins by the time we got to St.M (arr 11.24), but it’s a small station and we ran down the passage ramp, turned left and out into the bus terminal and jumped on the EV3. No ticket check.
We had figured earlier as well that even if we didn’t make that bus connection the timetable (in the DB or ÖBB app (not Eurail planner), said there were more buses every half an hr. Even if we had to wait an hr for another bus it would still be a quicker journey than going via Zurich.

As we arrived at St.M the train announcements said that due to the delay the Zurich train would now be stuck behind a local service delaying it further by Zurich (35min). This probably meant that we would have missed the next train to Chur and so be two hrs later than the route we actually chose.

The EV3 arrived at Buchs bang on time and we walked directly onto the platform. The Chur train actually left from platform 2 (via the underpass) but we had 7mins rays from bus to train which is only about 50m.

Now sat on the Chur train due in at 12.48 and feeling smug about resisting the temptation to go to Zurich.
(Later in the week we return along the line back to Zurich so we weren’t worried about missing views and the journey along that stretch on the way out).
Hope it goes well for you.

 

[jnjkerbin]

Hi.
It’s Wed 25th Oct 2023 and we have just done virtually the same journey as this. We left Salzburg 06.00, changed in Munich for the 08.55 direction Zurich, but decided to try the EV3 bus from St Margrethen to Buchs. It’s absolutely fine.
The train from Munich (as predicted) delayed by 15mins by the time we got to St.M (arr 11.24), but it’s a small station and we ran down the passage ramp, turned left and out into the bus terminal and jumped on the EV3. No ticket check.
We had figured earlier as well that even if we didn’t make that bus connection the timetable (in the DB or ÖBB app (not Eurail planner), said there were more buses every half an hr. Even if we had to wait an hr for another bus it would still be a quicker journey than going via Zurich.

As we arrived at St.M the train announcements said that due to the delay the Zurich train would now be stuck behind a local service delaying it further by Zurich (35min). This probably meant that we would have missed the next train to Chur and so be two hrs later than the route we actually chose.

The EV3 arrived at Buchs bang on time and we walked directly onto the platform. The Chur train actually left from platform 2 (via the underpass) but we had 7mins rays from bus to train which is only about 50m.

Now sat on the Chur train due in at 12.48 and feeling smug about resisting the temptation to go to Zurich.
(Later in the week we return along the line back to Zurich so we weren’t worried about missing views and the journey along that stretch on the way out).
Hope it goes well for you.

Thanks all - made it to Chur, albeit two hours later than planned thanks to a missed connection at München due to border checks delaying my RailJet and then DB short-forming the RegioExpress to Lindau-Reutin, meaning I chose to wait for the next Zürich EuroCity "Express" rather than try and squeeze on. As expected, that then got held up leading to a rather tight 1 minute connection at St Margrethen! The bus was fortunately a couple of minutes late turning up (!) but made it to Buchs on time. Looking forward to not having to rely on Deutsche Bahn for the next few days!