Why this unassuming train station clock is a must-see attraction

In a country of clockmakers the answer to the question of what makes Switzerland tick, and for that matter, tock, is everywhere to be seen, what with a watch shop on the corner of seemingly every city, town and even village.

That chronographic compulsion doesn’t end at street level either. Kirchhofer High Time – atop the 3463-metre peak Jungfraujoch, dubbed the Top of Europe – claims to be the world’s loftiest wristwatch purveyor.

Even more ubiquitous, especially if you’re traversing this monumentally mountainous nation by train, is the classic Swiss railway clock, an outsized version of which can be found on the oft crowded concourse below the vast vaulted ceiling of Zurich Hauptbahnhof, the city’s main railway terminal with a history that can be traced to 1847.

Here commuters rendezvous not under the main station clock but around it since it’s not suspended from above but fastened to the floor on four tall steel legs.

Odd, even a little cuckoo, as it may sound, this clock has been high on my Swiss must-not-miss list on this, my first visit to Switzerland as part of an independent Inspiring Vacations 12-day Grand Train Tour of the country.

A train-journey fancier, as distinct from a rolling stock tragic (trust me, there is a difference), from way down the line, I’m delighted to view the classic Swiss railway clock in situ as I begin my nearly two-week journey by rail around this landlocked, mountain and lake strewn beauty of a nation.

No ordinary timepiece, this is one of the largest versions of the storied Swiss railway clock with its minimalist Bauhaus design of a white face, black and red minutes and second hands with light and dark notches (“indices” and “hour markers”, apparently, to the purists) signifying numbers. What’s more, as I am to discover during my Switzerland sojourn, this is not just a pretty clock face but also an ingenious piece of technology.

Today it’s a design icon that’s included in the 20th century design collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York as well as that of Zurich’s Museum fur Gestaltung, home to Switzerland’s largest archive of international design. The museum’s 150th anniversary was marked earlier this year with the opening of the new permanent exhibition, the Swiss Design Collection, which encompasses 580,000 items.

In the Zurich institution’s newly opened basement archive, a transparent glass walkway leads visitors through an elaborate two-storey shelving system, offering views of selected objects of the collection including influential chairs, posters, textiles, typography and, this being Switzerland, even illustrated chocolate-bar wrappers. Elsewhere, a Swiss railway clock is on prominent display behind a magnificent suspended Bauhaus marionette.

In 1986, a spin-off of this same clock face led to a boom of sorts when the SBB Swiss Railways, which operates classic Swiss tourist trains such as the Glacier Express, licensed the design to the Swiss Mondaine brand which created a collection of luxury-level wristwatches (disclosure: I own a couple of them) as well as wall and desk clocks using the railway timepiece design.

Subtle variations, such as watches with black, not the regulation white, backgrounds followed and for a time, as it were, even the Apple conglomerate used, initially without permission, the clock face in combination with devices such as iPads and iPhones.

The history of the clock face can be traced to World War II neutral Switzerland when Hans Hilfiker created a blueprint for a new official timepiece to be used by the Federal Swiss Railways. Hilfiker subsequently updated his design to include a red second hand, inspired by the similarly coloured baton of railway dispatchers who oversaw train movements at Switzerland’s far-flung railway stations.

Yet even here, in one of the few countries to rival Japan for efficient railway, timetables do not include seconds; trains in Switzerland always leave the station on the full minute.

What really distinguishes the Swiss railway clock, aside from its eminently readable face, is that it features a red-coloured second hand with a unique stop-and-go movement which completes a full rotation in 58 seconds. It then pauses at the 12 o’clock position for two seconds before the minute hand advances with the pause allowing for synchronisation with a central master clock.

The result? All railway station clocks across the entirety of Switzerland display the same time, including one of my favourites, positioned on the platform at Alp Grum, at an altitude of 2091 metres one of the highest points along the storied Bernina Express train route.

It’s there, following a brief stop for passengers to alight the train and admire the panoramic alpine views, that the conductor sounds a bell, synchronised to a Swiss railway clock attached to the same stand, to alert sightseers to the Bernina Express’ imminent departure.

In Switzerland, time really does stand still, at least momentarily on its railway clocks, but, as for its trains themselves, well, they wait for no man or woman, no matter the altitude above sea level.

Five more icons of Swiss design

Freitag bags and accessories
Graphic design student brothers, Markus and Daniel Freitag, created their first bags from recycled truck tarpaulins, discarded car-seat belts and inner tubes in 1993. A decade later, their uber cool designs would become a global retail hit, making it into MoMA New York’s design collection. Furthermore, the brand’s flagship store in Zurich, a 26 metre-high tower built from 19 stacked recycled shipping containers, has become a city landmark. See freitag.ch

The Swatch
In 1983 Nicolas G. Hayek launched the Swatch, Switzerland’s uncharacteristically strident response to the surge of cheap watches from South-East Asia. Low on cost but high on design, the new watch, in stark contrast to expensive luxury brands such as Rolex, was made from just 51 components and assembled on automated production lines with a Swiss-made movement. See swatch.com

The Swiss Army Knife
Believe it or not, that essence of practicality, the Swiss Army knife, wasn’t the first such foldable multipurpose blade. But, after having been adopted and adapted by the Swiss army in the late-19th century, it has become synonymous with Switzerland. Virtually every decent Swiss souvenir shop stocks the knife, these days produced by Victorinox, a design-minded company which has polished, if not sharpened, the item’s aesthetics. See victorinox.com.au

Helvetica typeface
Conceived by Max Miedinger, a Swiss graphic designer, in 1957, the Bauhaus-influenced sans serif typeface Helvetica has become perhaps the world’s most famous font. To this day global brands as diverse as BMW, Panasonic, North Face, Jeep and Nestlé still use what’s been dubbed “the Swiss grande dame of typefaces” favoured for its timeless legibility. German company Linotype manages the lucrative licence for the sizeable family of Helvetica fonts. See linotype.com

The Rex peeler
Since its invention in 1947 by Swiss designer Alfred Neweczerzal, this prosaic but efficient kitchen implement has proved universally appealing with 50 million Rex peelers having been sold around the world. Humble as it may be, and described as “one of the lightest and least expensive design objects in history”, the peeler has appeared on an official Swiss stamp and been displayed, in the company of other Swiss design icons, at New York’s MoMA.

The details

Tour
Inspiring Vacations’ 12-day Grand Train Tour of Switzerland includes journeys aboard the nation’s most world-famous scenic alpine trains, a visit to Europe’s highest railway station and two- and one-night stays in major Swiss cities such as Zurich, Lucerne and Lugano.

Book
The 12-day Grand Train Tour of Switzerland tour starts from $6895 a person (airfares not included), based on independent travel in 2026 with all rail arrangements within Switzerland included as well as 11 nights quality three-star accommodation with breakfast daily. A 12-day Grand Train Tour of Switzerland with Ultimate Rail Upgrades starts from $8795 a person (airfares not included) with the above inclusions and quality four-star accommodation. See inspiringvacations.com/au

Fly
Singapore Airlines offers daily flights from both Sydney and Melbourne to Zurich with connections in Singapore. See singaporeair.com

More
sbb.ch; museum-gestaltung.ch; mondaine.com.au; myswitzerland.com