Centovalli Railway

A return ticket from Locarno to Domodossola costs 31.00. The operator's own price list does not say of what. It prints CHF/EUR 31.00, one figure for two currencies, and leaves the passenger to decide which money to hand over — which is as good a summary of this railway as any sentence could manage. Fifty-two kilometres of metre gauge run from a Swiss lakeside town to an Italian market town, and the line has never entirely settled which country it belongs to. Twenty kilometres of it lie in Ticino and thirty-two in Piedmont. It is owned outright by two separate companies, FART on the Swiss side and SSIF on the Italian, which hand over at a village called Camedo without the train so much as pausing. It even has two names: the Centovallina in Switzerland, the Vigezzina in Italy.

It opened on 25 November 1923, the work of an Italian–Swiss committee that spent five years pushing a railway through country too broken to make it easy. The operator counts 83 bridges and viaducts and 31 tunnels in those 52 kilometres; the gradient reaches six per cent, the curves close to a fifty-metre radius, and the summit is only 830 metres above the sea. Trains run every day of the year and take a few minutes under two hours end to end. A valid identity card is needed to cross the border. Nothing else about the journey is complicated.

The through train leaves Locarno from underground. The FART platforms sit in a cut-and-cover box beneath the town, built in 1990 to get the railway off the streets it had used since 1923, and for the first two minutes the Centovalli railway is a metro. It surfaces at Solduno, crosses the Maggia on a girder bridge shared with the cantonal road at Ponte Brolla, and turns west into a side valley that immediately becomes the whole point of the journey.

The Centovalli — the hundred valleys — is not one valley but a slot cut by the Melezza between two ridges, with a hundred smaller clefts running down into it from either side. There is no room on the floor for a railway, so there is no railway on the floor. The line is carried along the northern wall on a ledge, and every time a side stream interrupts the ledge it is bridged. That is where the 83 bridges come from. Some are stone arches thrown across a gully in a single span; the largest are steel, and the two worth waiting for are the Isorno bridge just west of Intragna, where the train crosses the gorge on an iron arch with the village and its bell tower directly above, and the Ruinacci viaduct near Camedo, a lattice arch on the lip of the Palagnedra reservoir.

The Swiss half

Between Ponte Brolla and Camedo the villages sit high on the slopes and the stations sit below them. Intragna is the largest, and its parish church of San Gottardo carries the tallest bell tower in Ticino at 65 metres — visible from the train for several minutes before the station and several after. Verdasio has two cable cars from beside the platform, and Palagnedra has a dammed reservoir, green and still under the wooded slopes. Camedo is the last Swiss station, a red goods-shed of a building with a small Swiss customs house on the platform, and the frontier itself is a few hundred metres beyond it at the Ribellasca bridge.

The gradients on this stretch are the steepest on the line. Between Verdasio and Intragna the railway climbs at six per cent, which for a line with no rack and no cable is close to the limit of what adhesion will hold, and the curves are tight enough that a 60 km/h limit is academic for most of the way.

The Italian half

Past the border the country opens. The Valle Vigezzo is a broad, flat-floored, sunlit valley — the only alpine valley in the region that runs east to west, which is why it gets the light it does — and after two hours of gorge it comes as a shock. Re is the first Italian stop, with the domed basilica of the Madonna del Sangue directly above the platform. Malesco, Santa Maria Maggiore and Druogno follow across the valley floor, the summit at 830 metres somewhere among them, and then the line falls off the western end of the valley towards the Ossola in a long descent through Trontano and Masera to Domodossola, where it dives underground again into the SSIF platforms beside the Italian state station.

What runs

The international services come in two families. The Centovalli Express sets are the Swiss-owned stock, rebuilt in recent years with first and second class and large windows. The Vigezzo Vision panorama trains are the reason some departures carry a supplement: they have a trapezium cross section, so the glass leans out over the passenger's head, and they sell a seat immediately behind the driver's cab. Alongside both, the SSIF still owns the ABe 8/8 twin railcars of 1959 — blue-and-cream, articulated, unmistakable — and puts them back on the through workings when the panorama sets are in the shops, which is what one photographer caught them doing in April 2024.

The shortcut nobody notices

There is a practical reason this railway is busier than a valley of five thousand people would suggest. It is the shortest link between the Simplon and the Gotthard, and that makes it the fastest way from the Valais to Ticino. Brig to Locarno takes 2 hours 40 minutes by way of Domodossola and the Centovalli. The all-Swiss alternative, by Bern, Lucerne and Bellinzona, takes 4 hours 30. The quickest route between two Swiss cantons leaves the country to do it.

The Centovalli railway runs every day of the year, on one timetable valid from 14 December 2025 to 12 December 2026. There is no summer service and no winter service — the same trains run in January as in August.

Through trains between Locarno and Domodossola are labelled either PE 72 (PanoramaExpress) or RE 73 (RegioExpress), and both take about 1 hour 50 minutes to 1 hour 55 end to end. The difference between them is the small Italian halts: the RegioExpress adds Folsogno-Dissimo, Zornasco, Prestinone, Gagnone-Orcesco, Verigo and Creggio, which the PanoramaExpress runs through. Neither calls at the Swiss halts between Locarno and Intragna — Solduno, Ponte Brolla, Tegna, Verscio, Cavigliano, Corcapolo, Verdasio and Palagnedra are the business of the local R 70, which works the Swiss half only, Locarno to Camedo or Verdasio, roughly hourly through the day.

The pattern below was queried against the Swiss national timetable database in August 2026 for a Thursday, a Friday, a Saturday and a Sunday in September 2026, a Saturday in October 2026 and a Wednesday in January 2027. Every date returned the same service but for one late train each way, which is noted where it belongs.

Through trains, Locarno to Domodossola

Nine departures: 06:50, 07:51, 09:51, 10:51, 12:51, 14:51, 15:51, 16:51, 17:50 — and, on Fridays and Sundays only, a tenth at 18:51. The intermediate times below are those of the 12:51.

Through trains, Domodossola to Locarno

Nine departures: 08:26, 09:26, 10:26, 11:26, 12:26, 13:26, 15:26, 17:26, 19:00 — and, again on Fridays and Sundays only, a tenth at 20:26. The intermediate times are those of the 11:26.

The operator's own FAQ gives the same shape from the other end: the last train from Domodossola is 19:00 from Monday to Thursday and on Saturday, and 20:25 on Friday and Sunday.

The trains that carry a supplement

Four eastbound and two westbound departures are worked by the Vigezzo Vision panorama sets and attract a €1.50 panorama supplement, payable to the conductor or online. As published by the operator on 4 April 2026, until further notice:

Standing is not allowed on a panorama train, so a seat reservation is worth having on those six departures.

Connections at each end

At Locarno the FART platforms are underground beneath the SBB station at Muralto; the S20 to Bellinzona and the trains to Lugano and the Gotthard leave from above. At Domodossola the SSIF platforms are likewise underground, beside the Italian state station, which sits on the Simplon main line to Brig and on the line to Milan. ⚠️ Some Simplon regional services between Iselle di Trasquera and Domodossola were running as replacement buses in September 2026 because of engineering work; the EuroCity and InterRegio trains through the tunnel were not affected.

Timetable: Ferrovia Vigezzina-Centovalli and the Swiss national timetable database, checked August 2026.

Tickets are sold in francs or in euros, and the operator prints the same figure for both. The standard product for the whole line is the International Tourist Ticket, a return valid for two days with one intermediate stop allowed each way: CHF/EUR 31.00 in second class, 41.00 in first, half that for children aged 6 to 15. A seat reservation is CHF 5.00 / EUR 4.00 a journey, compulsory for groups of ten and effectively so on the six panorama departures, where standing is not permitted.

Two cheaper ways are easy to miss. Vigezzina No Limits buys unlimited travel on the Italian half for €12 a day, which beats the through fare for anyone staying in the Valle Vigezzo. And the Ticino Ticket, issued free to overnight guests in the canton, covers Locarno to Camedo outright and takes 20 per cent off the rest. Fares read from the operator's own price tables, August 2026.

This is one of the few railways where a Swiss pass is worth having for a journey that spends most of its length in Italy. The whole line, both halves, is inside the Swiss fare system.

Swiss Travel Pass, GA and Half Fare

The operator states it plainly: AG (GA), FVP, day passes and the Swiss Travel Pass give free travel over the whole line, Locarno to Domodossola. What they do not cover is the seat reservation (CHF 5.00 / EUR 4.00 per journey) or the panorama supplement (CHF/EUR 1.50), both of which remain payable. A Swiss Half Fare Card halves the fare in the ordinary way.

Two exclusions are worth knowing. The Half Fare Card and FVP are not recognised in combination with the International Tourist Ticket — the discounted return described under Tickets — and the Junior Card and Children's Co-travelcard are likewise not valid with it, although they do work if the accompanying adult holds a GA, a day pass or a Swiss Travel Pass.

Interrail and Eurail

Both halves are free, and the Swiss validity map for 2026 lists them separately because they are separate companies:

• FART: Locarno – Camedo transito
• SSIF: Camedo transito – Domodossola

Neither appears in the bonus column, which is where discounted operators go. They are in the free column, so a Global Pass covers the line end to end at no extra cost beyond the reservation and any panorama supplement. The same page also puts Iselle transito – Domodossola in the free column, which means the Simplon connection to Brig is covered too, and a Domodossola circuit — out over the Centovalli, back through the Simplon tunnel — costs a pass holder nothing at all.

⛔ An Interrail or Eurail One Country Pass for Switzerland will not do. A one-country pass cannot be used to travel into or out of the country it covers, and half of this line is in Italy. On this railway that is not a footnote: it rules out the journey. A One Country Pass for Italy has the mirror-image problem.

Is a pass worth buying for this journey alone?

No — a return costs CHF 31.00, and no pass sold for a single line would pay for itself against that. The point is the other way round: if you already hold a Swiss Travel Pass, a GA or a Global Pass, this is a two-hour international journey that costs you nothing, and most pass holders never find out it is there.

Checked August 2026 against the operator's conditions and the 2026 Swiss validity map for Eurail and Interrail passes.

The International Tourist Ticket is a two-day return that allows one intermediate stop each way, so breaking the journey is built into the fare rather than charged for. With nine or ten through trains a day in each direction, a stop of two hours or of a whole afternoon costs nothing but the wait.

The six places below run west to east, in the order the train from Locarno reaches them. Three are in Switzerland and three in Italy, and the character changes at the border as sharply as the language does: gorge villages on shelves above the Melezza on the Swiss side, a wide sunlit valley floor with market towns on it once the train is past Camedo.

Two hours each way makes this an easy day out from either end, but the valley rewards a night in it, and the two-day tourist ticket is written for exactly that. The four houses below stand at the two termini and at two points along the line, and every one of them is within a few minutes of a platform — one of them close enough that the track runs past the front door.

Prices and star ratings are not listed here because we have not checked them. What is described is what each house says about itself and what can be verified about where it stands.