Winterthur railway station
Winterthur is Switzerland's fifth busiest station, and is a major node between Switzerland's largest railway nucleus in Zürich and places in Eastern Switzerland (such as St. Gallen and Schaffhausen), as well as Germany (Munich), and Austria (Vorarlberg). The station is served by trains on Zürich's suburban S-Bahn network, as well as by regional and intercity trains, with most through passenger trains making a stop. It is also connected with Zürich's airport railway station Zürich Flughafen, which can be reached in about 15 minutes about every 8 minutes. Zürich Hauptbahnhof can be reached with up to 16 direct connections per hour and the fastest connection takes only 22 minutes (S12). The station has 9 standard gauge platforms (numbered 1-9).
Zürich Underground Railway
In 1946, Kurt Wiesinger, professor of engineering at the ETH Zürich, put forward plans for a highspeed train that would have covered the distance between Zürich main station and Oerlikon in two minutes. Architect Wolfgang Nägeli presented a more realistic project in the Schweizerische Bauzeitung in 1947. Several tramlines were to be relocated underground in the city centre. He proposed building a tunnel underneath the Bahnhofsstrasse between Bürkliplatz and the Platzspitz park, along with lines branching off from Paradeplatz to Sihlstrasse and from the main station to Weinbergstrasse. This first draft comprised 2.7 kilometres of tunnels, as well as 0.2 kilometres of ramps and bridges. He calculated the costs would be between 35 and 40 million Swiss Francs. In a second step, he planned a second stage from Weinbergstraße to Beckenhof covering 1.1 kilometres of distance (plus 0.7 kilometres for ramps) and costing another 14 to 18 million Swiss Francs.