Even the commuter trains are spectacular in this country

Want to know why you should take a train in Switzerland? I’m not talking about those expensive private trains to mountain summits. I’m talking ordinary trains. The trains that Swiss commuters get every day, the trains weekend hikers take, and Zurich bankers going home to see their grannies in alpine valleys.

Hop on a train that runs along the north shore of Lake Neuchatel and you’ll know why. Or the north shore of Lake Geneva. Actually, any shore of any Swiss lake. Or through a valley. Or over a pass. Or whatever, just get on a train. It hardly matters which one.

Look out the window and you’ll see why. Mountains and lakes. Old towns with pie-crust roofs and pepper-pot towers. Vineyards strung like sheet music across undulating hills. Larch forests aflame in autumn colour. I spent the first half of my life in Switzerland and have ridden its rails for decades, but have yet to find ugly or uninteresting scenery.

Train rides are among the top things I miss about my former life. We Australians aren’t conditioned to thinking of trains as the pleasant transport option. Australia is too big and flat and its trains too sluggish and temperamental.

In Switzerland, a train ride isn’t a chore but a worthy experience. Modern Switzerland was built around trains. City stations are right within a squint of battlements, main shopping streets and hotels. And Swiss cities are small. Ride a train out of town and you only endure graffitied inner-city concrete for minutes.

All Swiss trains guarantee the same thing. You’ll slide out of the station as the red second hand on the iconic Swiss railway clocks lurches to the vertical. You’ll have a comfortable seat and clean window. A neatly uniformed and polyglot ticket inspector will come wandering along.

Blue station signs flash by, announcing unheard-of towns that sound like science-fiction planets: Aargau, Rothrist, Dottikon, Root. If you alight, pointy yellow signs indicating walking and cycling paths soon have you in forests and fields.

On a train, you can go where your whim takes you. You can hurtle on an express train through the St Gotthard Tunnel and, leaving a foggy autumn day behind, burst out into sunlit, Italian-speaking Ticino and have lunch under palm trees.