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).
Heitersberg Railway
The Heitersberg Railway ("Heitersbergstrecke") is a Swiss railway line between the stations of Killwangen-Spreitenbach and Aarau on the east-west main line between Zürich und Bern. The main structure of the line is the 4,929 metre-long Heitersberg Tunnel, which has its west portal near Mellingen and its east portal near Killwangen.
The line was built in the 1970s as part of the planned "New Main Transversal" ("Neue Haupttransversale", NHT) project. It was opened on 1 June 1975 and handed over for scheduled operations on 22 May 1975.
The Heitersberg route branches off from the Zürich–Baden–Aarau–Olten–Bern main line after Killwangen and runs through an almost five kilometre-long tunnel to Heitersberg (west portal at , east portal at ), connecting in Mellingen with the line from Wettingen built by the Swiss National Railway ("Schweizerische Nationalbahn") and in Othmarsingen with the Aargauische Südbahn (Aargau Southern Railway) from Brugg to Rotkreuz. Outside of Othmarsingen, there is a three-level crossing with a cantonal road and branches running towards Hendschiken and Lenzburg. West of Lenzburg a new line runs to Rupperswil and then it turns into a recently rebuilt four-track section to Aarau.
Thanks to the new direct line, including the tunnel, which allows speeds of 140 km/h, the running time between Zürich and Bern has been reduced by 20 minutes, partly as a result of the building of other structures such as the Grauholz Tunnel near Bern.
Ballastless track was tested in the Heitersberg tunnel from 1975 to 2014.
The development of the Heitersberg route is part of the Future development of rail infrastructure ("Zukünftige Entwicklung der Bahninfrastruktur") program. The construction of the "Chestenberg Tunnel" between Rupperswil and Gruemet was proposed, but a direct 30 km-long tunnel between Aarau and Zürich is now favoured. The Eppenberg Tunnel has been under construction since 2015 as a continuation of the Heitersberg line towards Olten.