Zell am See is one of the few Alpine towns where arriving by train works without compromise: the station is right in the middle of the town, less than five minutes on foot from the lake promenade and the old town. From Salzburg you travel here without changing in a good hour and a half, from Munich with one change in around three to four hours, and from Vienna in about five. The sticking point is not the journey itself but the last mile: if your accommodation is in Kaprun, Schuettdorf or Thumersbach you will need a bus, hotel shuttle or taxi.<\/p>\n
In many ski resorts the railway ends in the valley town and the actual holiday village lies another twenty kilometres and three hairpins higher up. Zell am See is different: the Salzburg-Tyrol line, the old Gisela railway, runs directly through the town. The station stands at the edge of the centre, and if you are staying in the centre, the old town or on the esplanade you simply wheel your case across. The base station of the Schmittenh\u00f6he lift is a few minutes away by local bus.<\/p>\n
The narrow-gauge Pinzgau local railway towards Mittersill and Krimml also starts at the same station, a small experience in its own right for trips into the upper Pinzgau and a genuine alternative to the car in summer.<\/p>\n
These figures are orders of magnitude, not timetable data. Engineering works, season and day of the week shift them noticeably, especially on winter Saturdays when extra ski trains run.<\/p>\n
The OeBB sells part of its seats as contingent Sparschiene tickets. Each train has a limited quantity of cheap tickets, and the closer the travel day comes the more likely that contingent is used up. Book six to eight weeks ahead and you regularly pay a fraction of the standard fare. Booking usually opens about six months in advance.<\/p>\n
Important for your budget: from the first overnight stay guests generally receive a guest or mobility card covering the regional buses at no extra charge. Ask for it at check-in and have them show you which lines are included, as details differ between summer and winter.<\/p>\n
Trains almost always arrive before check-in time. Rather than sitting at the station, leave your luggage at the hotel and spend the afternoon by the lake or in the old town. Two things are still worth doing on arrival day in winter: ski hire and shopping.<\/p>\n
Rental shops are busiest on arrival day between 3pm and 6pm; reserve online and you collect in minutes. For shopping, the Austrian reality applies: supermarkets close on Sundays and public holidays. Arriving on a Sunday, shop at your interchange station or plan the first evening in a restaurant. It also makes sense to buy the ski pass online in advance; how the tariffs work is explained under ski pass prices<\/a>.<\/p>\n Salzburg airport is the obvious combination. A trolleybus runs from the terminal to the main station in about twenty minutes, where you change to the train. Allow generously: with baggage reclaim, bus and platform change, two hours of buffer between landing and your booked train is realistic, especially with a train-bound ticket. From Munich airport you take the S-Bahn into the city and continue via Salzburg, a long but uncomplicated chain.<\/p>\n The train is the better choice if you are staying in the centre or near the station, have skiing, hiking and the lake as your main programme, and want to manage without a car. You also avoid hunting for parking entirely, a subject covered under parking in Zell am See.<\/p>\n It is less suitable if you are staying somewhere remote, plan many day trips beyond the region, or travel with very small children and a lot of luggage. The honest weighing-up is in do you need a car in Zell am See?. A middle way works well: arrive by train and hire a car for one or two excursion days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Arriving by rail in Zell am See: connections from Salzburg, Munich, Vienna and Innsbruck, how the Sparschiene works, skis and luggage on the train, and the last mile to Kaprun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":424,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zell-am-see-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zellamseekaprun.at\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Flight plus train: Salzburg and Munich<\/h2>\n
Who the train suits, and who it does not<\/h2>\n