Which side of the train?
Forum threads have argued about this for twenty years, one route at a time. Pick yours, set the direction and the time, and get the answer segment by segment, with the direction reversals handled.
Times are UTC. Working out a local offset needs a timezone database with historical daylight-saving rules, and getting it subtly wrong would give you a confidently incorrect answer.
Sit on the left. 5 of the 5 one-sided views you pass in daylight are on that side. One more is visible from both sides. Note the direction change en route: keep your seat and your side swaps.
The famous one, and the one people get wrong. It reverses at Chur, so a seat that spent the morning on the scenic side spends the afternoon facing a rock wall.
What you pass
- leftThe Matterhornabout 10 min in · 9 km off the route
Behind you as you leave Zermatt, so worth a look back rather than out.
- leftThe Rhône vineyard terracesabout 1h 19m in · 3 km off the route
Broad, vineyard-terraced and completely unlike the high passes either side of it.
- leftOberalpseeabout 3h 40m in · 1 km off the route
The high point of the line at 2,033 m, snowbound for much of the year.
- leftThe Rhine Gorge cliffsabout 5h 49m in · 1 km off the route
Switzerland's Grand Canyon. The river and the white cliffs are on one side only.
- both sidesLandwasser Viaductabout 6h 56m in
Six arches curving straight into a tunnel mouth in the cliff. The famous photograph.
- leftThe Albula spiral viaductsabout 7h 24m in · 1 km off the route
The line loops back over itself to gain height, so the view repeats from higher up.
On the right of travel, but you passed a direction change, so from your original seat it is on the left.
Why the usual advice fails
Search any famous scenic railway and you will find someone confidently saying “sit on the right”. It is usually true of one direction and one stretch, and wrong the rest of the time. Three things break the simple rule.
Direction. Every side swaps when you travel the other way, and half the people asking are going the other way.
Reversals. The Glacier Express changes direction at Chur. Stay in your seat and the scenic side becomes the wall side. No article can express that without knowing where you sat.
The clock. A summer departure and a winter one see completely different journeys. Half the Bergen Railway in December is in the dark, and no seat helps with that.
Common questions
- Which side of the Glacier Express has the best views?
- Going from Zermatt to St. Moritz, most of the one-sided scenery is on the left of your seat. The catch is that the train reverses direction at Chur, so the side of travel swaps halfway. That is why advice like 'sit on the right' is wrong for half the journey, and why this tool reports both the side of travel and the side of your original seat.
- Which side of the Coast Starlight for the ocean?
- Heading south from Seattle to Los Angeles the Pacific is on the right. Heading north it is on the left. The ocean stretch is only the few hours between San Luis Obispo and Oxnard, so the rest of the trip is decided by the Cascades, Mount Shasta and San Francisco Bay instead.
- Why does the answer change halfway through some journeys?
- Some trains reverse direction at an intermediate station. The carriage does not turn around, so a passenger who stays in the same seat finds that what was the left of the train is now the right. The Glacier Express does this at Chur. No general rule can cover it, which is the entire reason for a tool.
- Does the sun matter as much as the view?
- On a long daytime run, often more. The sunny side gets hot, the blinds come down, and nobody on that side sees anything. The tool reports what share of the journey has the sun on each side so you can weigh a view against a closed blind.
- How accurate are the routes?
- Each route is a hand-digitised polyline through its principal stations and turns. That is precise enough to decide which side something is on, and deliberately not a signalling diagram. It also means the distance is under-measured on winding mountain lines, which is why the tool shows journey time rather than kilometres.
Flying instead? There is a version for flights, and one for cruise cabins. More under tools.