Reasons for holidays by motorail train
Inexpensive: Surcharges for car transport start at just CHF 44 for a journey to Austria. If you calculate the vignette and the kilometres travelled, you often get off better with the motorail train.
Environmentally friendly: Are you considering travelling by motorail train? The climate would be grateful! Travelling by train produces around 3 times less CO2 than the same journey by car. The motorail train combines a climate-friendly journey with full flexibility at the destination.
Time-efficient: Hop on the night train after dinner and arrive in the city well-rested the next morning. No other means of travelling is as relaxing as the night train. The journey feels like it only takes an hour: 30 minutes to fall asleep and 30 minutes to wake up and get out of bed.
These destinations can be reached by motorail trains (and a few kilometres on the road)
Connections
The possibilities are numerous: you can travel with the ÖBB Nightjet from Feldkirch to Graz, Villach and Vienna every day, or in summer with the Bahn-Touristik-Express from Lörrach near Basel to Hamburg. For a trip to the Balkans, you can also start your journey with the motorail train from Villach to Edirne near Istanbul.
Information about travelling by motorail train
How does the motorail train work?
An overnight train is built to sleep in. There are usually three classes of compartment: seating carriages, couchette carriages and sleeping carriages. At the end of the trains are the car loading carriages, on which your car can travel safely through the night. You can find more information about how night trains are equipped here.
Around one to two hours before departure, motorists gather with their vehicle at the loading point, where their car is checked for the correct dimensions.
Which vehicles can be transported?
Most cars are suitable for loading onto the motorail train. If the car is between 158 and 196 cm high, the roof width must not exceed 155 cm. If the car is between 196 and 205 cm high, the roof width must not exceed 135 cm. Unfortunately, larger cars cannot be taken on board.
Motorbikes can also be transported on all trains. Bicycles can only be transported on the overnight trains Zurich–Vienna, Zurich–Hamburg and Zurich–Amsterdam, but you can already take them with you from Switzerland.