Milan to Zurich
Under the Alps by EuroCity

Few stations announce a journey like Milano Centrale - a vast 1931 monument of marble staircases, winged horses and iron canopies. Zurich trains depart from the main trainshed; Italian long-distance platforms can involve a ticket check at the gate line, so keep your ticket handy and allow a few extra minutes to walk the station's considerable length.

The EuroCity slips out through Milan's northern sprawl and is soon into the lake country of Brianza. Within forty minutes the ridge above Como appears - and with it the first glimpse of the water that gives this corridor its opening act.

The line calls at Como San Giovanni, on the hillside above the lake's southwestern tip - sit on the right side leaving Milan and you catch the water below the town, with the villas of the shoreline stacked against the mountains. Minutes later the train rolls through Chiasso, and Italy becomes Switzerland with barely a ripple.

Both countries are in Schengen, so there is no passport queue - the change announces itself instead in details: the trackside tidiness, the bilingual announcements, the sudden punctuality of everything. Switzerland sits outside the EU customs union, though, so uniformed officers do occasionally walk the train; keep your passport or ID card reachable rather than buried.

One minute you are in Lombardy, the next in Switzerland - and only the announcements and the punctuality give it away.

The Ticino is Switzerland speaking Italian, and Lugano is its capital of style: the train runs high above Lake Lugano with the city terraced below, palm trees along the waterfront and the sugarloaf peaks of Monte Brè and San Salvatore framing the bay. It is the scenic high point of the journey - worth putting the phone down for, whichever direction you are travelling.

Beyond Lugano the train threads the Monte Ceneri Base Tunnel into the flat-bottomed valley of the Ticino river, and calls at Bellinzona - guarded by three UNESCO-listed medieval castles, visible from the train, that once controlled every cart crossing these passes. Then the valley walls rise, and the line aims straight at the wall of the Alps.

At Bodio the train enters the Gotthard Base Tunnel and, for around twenty minutes, the Alps happen overhead. Opened in 2016 after seventeen years of boring, it is the longest rail tunnel in the world at 57 kilometres, running up to 2,300 metres beneath the peaks - an engineering monument you experience mostly as a pressure change and a steady 200 km/h hum.

Honesty requires saying what the tunnel replaced: the old panoramic mountain line over the passes, with its spiral tunnels and the church at Wassen appearing three times at different heights. That line still exists - seasonal panorama services and slower trains use it - but the everyday EuroCity takes the fast way through. You surface at Erstfeld into a different climate and a different language, with the Lake of Uri and then the Zugersee accompanying the final run past Arth-Goldau and Zug toward Zurich.

The old line climbed over the Alps in loops and spirals; the new one simply refuses to acknowledge them. Twenty minutes of darkness, and the weather has changed.

The EuroCity ends at Zürich HB, Switzerland's biggest station, right on the river Limmat at the head of the old town - the Bahnhofstrasse begins at the front door, and the lanes of the Niederdorf with the Grossmünster's twin towers are ten minutes on foot along the water. Trams fan out from the station square to everywhere else.

Zürich HB is also Switzerland's great junction: from the same platforms, direct trains continue to Lucerne in around 50 minutes, to Interlaken and the Jungfrau region in about two hours, and to Chur for the Glacier and Bernina connections. Arriving from Milan, you are one easy change from the whole Swiss network - which is exactly how many travellers use this route.

With a normal ticket this route is simple: buy in advance for the best fares, your seat is assigned automatically, and boarding needs no security theatre at either end (just Milano Centrale's gate-line ticket check). Rail passes add one wrinkle - the direct EuroCity requires a compulsory paid seat reservation covering the Italian leg to Chiasso, bookable through the operators or agencies such as ÖBB and Rail Europe, and worth arranging ahead in summer.

The pass-holder workaround is worth knowing: regional trains with a change at Chiasso or Lugano need no reservation at all and are fully covered. It costs perhaps an hour and a little comfort, and in exchange the Ticino leg can even use the old scenic alignments. Whichever you choose, carry your passport or ID - Schengen removes the queues, not the occasional onboard spot check.