While I love driving, there’s something I adore about trains.  As a designer, I unintentionally pay attention to all of the pieces of my experience while on them.  So for the love of trains and good UX, I’ve done a review of three train apps that I’ve used in the last year or so.  This is based on the versions from 2024-2025, there may be updates since I’ve used them so take all of this as a review of that time period.  These will be ranked by when I used them, not necessarily my favorites, but you’ll probably guess…

 

Preface:

There are a few main things for my experience that I look for in a train application:

1. How easy is it to use when I’m booking the train.
2. How easy is it to use when I’m keeping track of a train I’m about to board?
   1. Where am I going to catch the train?
   2. What’s the status of the train?
3. Planning my ride
   1. What do I do when I have a connection?
4. How useful is it when I’m on the train?

Another set of criteria I’ll use is how useful it was for me based on different disabilities I may have had while using the apps.  I don’t have a permanent disability in any of these use cases, but I do have some temporary disabilities when I’m using a few of them.

 

So for the French and the Swiss trains, I had:

1. Touch: A situational disability: too many bags.
2. Touch: Later a temporary disability: healing from a surgery that didn’t allow me to carry items heavier than basically my phone or a small bag.
3. Hear: Situational: not great French skills (I can understand it but in an overly loud environment I have a hard time understanding certain things and I’m just generally bad with large numbers like train numbers.)
4. Speak: Situational: terrible accent lol.

For the American trains:

1. Touch: Situational: too many dang bags lol.

 

SNCF Connect

SNCF is the company that I used most frequently when I was in France.  There’s also the OUIGO application for those trains, but I specifically used the SNCF for booking both long TGV rides and short rides between cities.  I also booked a train between France and Switzerland, which was honestly easier than I was expecting.

 

Home screen view for SNCF Connect.

Booking the train and finding tickets

You start out by adding a destination and starting point.  

 

Using the search feature.

 

It automatically gives you a prompt to use the most recent locations you’ve used.  Which makes things really easy if you’ve been doing a bit of research before you booked your train.  I do this before I get a plane ticket, because I have had a few times when I couldn’t find any trains to get me to the airport in time.

Choosing the departure city.

 

After choosing the departure and arrival stations or cities, you can add riders, other tickets, and discount codes.

From here we can indicate our travel reason.

Calendar view along with time selection at the bottom.

 

After hitting Search, we can see the different times available throughout the day selected.

What’s nice is that at the top, they allow you to see the lowest price per day, and you can toggle between train and bus options.

The cards per time frame will tell time of departure, time of arrival, and the station (important if you’re just trying to get to a town rather than a specific station.).  The funky part sometimes is that if you’re in a different timezone than France, it tends to find the timetables based on your location, so for instance: I was picking for 6AM and instead it was showing me trains for noon, which is just a funny quirk I think of being six/seven timezones away.  I didn’t have this problem when I was actually in CET so I assume this doesn’t impact most users.  Regardless, it gives you the option to go back to earlier train times if you want to check out any earlier ones.  I honestly liked the flexibility of the train picker here.

 

Ticket rate selection card view.

If you click on a specific train card, you get the details on each ticket option and it’ll give you your best price and show how many seats are available per.  This is enhanced by if you have a membership/transit discount card (I assume this is the case if you’re a senior traveler and have that card too.). 

 

Journey view with more details on the train and amenities.

From here you can click on the details, it’ll show what is covered in the ticket (luggage options, power plugs, wifi, and type of seats available.).

More details on what’s included in the ticket along with terms and conditions.

If you scroll further down, it’ll show a sort of minified look at the actual journey with some really useful info:  how early can you board, what time the train leaves the first destination on its journey, when you pick up the train, information about the train itself.  What I love about this part is that you can look at the details of the actual train.  

 

A look into the full voyage of the train and map of the train.

You get a little map on the top with a photo of what the train is going to look like, cars and details about the cars (such as if there’s a cafe), and it has a lovely little haptic vibration when you scroll between the cars.  Nice little touch. (On reflection, the ability to have that vibration when toggling between somewhat identical looking cars is a nice feature and helps discern that you’re going between different cars.)  Then you can see each stop in the journey and at what time is each stop.

 

Selection and payment for a ticket.

Purchasing the tickets is pretty simple; can use a card that you’ve already stored, and it allows you to use your discount card from the start of the process.  It’ll give you the option to cover your travel via Allianz in case of cancellation or if you need to cancel/reschedule your trip.  Certain tickets obviously are non-refundable such as ones you might purchase during a sale, but I’ve rescheduled most really easily and sometimes last minute.  Generally a pretty easy process.

 

Boarding the train

Here’s where I made some newbie mistakes the first few times.  Silly me, a baby who has only used cars and planes frequently, probably because I’m an American from the midwest; but I didn’t realize that your train was on the timetable displays listed as the destination.  So that being said, the most recent time I got on my train, I knew what to look for!  Which is, you go on the app, you look at the timeline for the journey and you find the last stop.  Simple!  Then from there, it’s useful to get the number of the train you’re going on, and then based on what gare (train station) you’re in, you will want to find the right hall you need to be in.  The station for CDG was pretty simple, thankfully for how jetlagged I was.  The thing to note though, is that if you’ve shown up earlier for your train than twenty minutes ahead of time (smart to do), you’re probably not going to find it on the timetable right away, or if you do, it might not have a platform yet.  So you wait until it’s about twenty minutes ahead, you find the platform, and you head that direction.  What’s cool is that once you get to your platform, there are displays with the same graphics and design as in the app so it’s super consistent.  You can check the app for what letter on the platform you need to go to in order to be at your car if you’ve reserved a specific seat.  It’s really nice!

From the app’s perspective, you have a few options in how you want to show your tickets.  You are given the option to save your QR code/ticket to your smart phone’s wallet, so in my case Google Wallet, or you can open up the app and on the main page, you’ll see a list of your journeys scheduled.  From there, you click on the card for the journey, and you can show the SNCF staff the QR code or you can slide between any of the tickets you have.  So if you have another person travelling with you that you’ve bought tickets for, you can slide between the two, or if you have a multi stop journey you can slide between the different QR codes per the leg of the journey.  In my case traveling from CDG to Valence, I had two sets of tickets, one for the CDG to Lyon Part Dieu, and from Part Dieu to Valence Ville.  They make it actually very easy from there.  In terms of that disability list I had at the beginning of this article, they made affordances for a person like me with too many bags and/or a cup of coffee in my hand.  I can have my QR code show up on my watch and the SNCF person at the gate to the platform can scan it via the watch (or the other above methods.)

Another nifty thing they do is once you have purchased your ticket, you can check the maps ahead of time for the train stations you’ll be visiting.  This is massively helpful if you’ve never been to the station.  It’s pretty simple to use and frankly made me much less stressed!

Another item to note, if your train’s status changes or once they post your platform number and hall, it’ll send you push notifications to tell you.  Smooth sailing!

 

While on the train

While on the train you can check the journey as you’re travelling, this is nice to be able to see what stops you have next so you can listen for yours.  You’ll be able to hear the next stop announced ahead of time and you also can see the next location via the marquees on each car.  You can also check the map for the train and see where the toilets are and where the cafe is (and your own seat!).  This is really useful if you are like me and don’t feel like being a menace to other passengers while bumbling along at highspeeds trying not to wake anyone up.  Also, if you’re a bit of a gourmande, you can actually check the menu for the cafe, AND order food!!!!  It’s SO cool and flawless from my experience.  Especially helpful for someone who isn’t super comfortable with numbers in French or you don’t feel comfortable ordering something with your mouth.  You can just order via the app, and head to the cafe when it says it’s going to be ready.  Fantastically easy.  Loved this feature.

Commuting Feature

They have a new feature where you can set up saved locations based on where you go frequently.  You can set a home station, work station, and some others as well.  I set this up based on where I usually travel in France, which is nice for quickly looking up tickets and knowing you didn’t accidentally pick one that was similarly spelled or close but not exact. Example: Lyon Parte Dieu vs Gare de Lyon (One is in Lyon and the other is in Paris).

Summary of SNCF Connect

Having used SNCF Connect for multiple types of voyages now, I really enjoy using the app.  It’s got a really solid experience from choosing your tickets and planning routes, to use while on the train.  I have come to be able to count on it when I’m in a rush and need information about train delays and I really don’t have many complaints or items I’d adjust about the experience or UI.  Overall great app.

 

SBB Mobile

This application I used while I was in Switzerland.  On one occasion I had a trip between Valence, France and Bulle, Switzerland.  I booked my tickets to Geneva via the SNCF app, and after that booked all other tickets between Geneva and Bulle via the SBB Mobile app.  Let me do a little preface here, I had never used the Swiss train system nor been to the country before using this app, so my review is based on a freaked out foreigner using it for the first time.  That being said, I’ll straight out say that this app BLEW my mind with how awesome it was.  I was on a really short trip, only about a day, and very nervous about missing my trains’ connections in a place I’d never been before.  SBB designed this absolutely perfectly, I don’t really have any suggestions or complaints.  It’s honestly a treat to look at, it’s so very Swiss Design.  It’s clean, and while it does a few things with its layout I haven’t seen with any of the other train apps, nothing seems so foreign or like “trying to reinvent the wheel so badly it’s unusable”.  It’s spectacular.

 

Booking the tickets

View of the home page after opening the app.

When you open the app, there are several buttons on the bottom of the screen.  Those are all kind of different quick reference buttons that take you to different screens with flows.  The top of certain pages will have different modes that you can switch between.  On the first page, it says Plan at the top.  This is the page where you can actually start your ticket search.  They have three modes at the top.  Timetable is similar to SNCF’s normal search.  It will default to your current location, and you can pick your destination (or manually enter both).  Then you have the option of date/time, it defaults to your current day.  If there’s nothing left on the timetable for the day, it’ll show the next day.

 

Timetables for the route and day selected.

Each card on this list shows the direction you’re headed, the stops on a sort of line, how long the route is, the time of departure and arrival, then specifics about the train, is it a TER, IR, TGV, or something else.  It also shows with little people icons how many seats are available in first or second class.

 

There’s a map that will show a simplified view of the route you’re taking.  You can toggle the type of map too which is pretty cool.  If you select the three dots icon on the side, you can add it to your calendar or share it.

After selecting a time, the user can see more details about the voyage.

When you select the card, you can see the journey.  Useful item here!  You can save the journey at the top, which is great if you’re trying to do some research for different routes you want to compare.

A helpful mini map is available to view the connection train station and your route from each platform.

When there’s a connection in your route, it says Change in a different card underneath each leg of the voyage.  Select the Change card and it actually will drop down and show you a minified map of the train station you’ll be at and the route you should walk to get to your next platform.

THIS IS FAN-TASTIC!!!  When I was doing my initial research, trying to navigate my trip to Bulle, this was absolutely amazing.  I’ll talk more about this later, but seriously as someone new to some of these train stations (or familiar and worried about catching my next train) this is invaluable.

A legend explaining the icons on each train card.

Nice little thing at the bottom of each of the voyage pages is the little Legend that shows what each icon means.  Most of the icons are pretty self explanatory but this was still really useful.

Catching the trains

So my previous experiences had been with just SNCF, and the French train stations.  When I went from Valence to Bulle, I had tickets I bought through SNCF to get me to Geneva, then I changed over to the Swiss system in SBB.  So my first train through SBB was in Geneva to Bulle with a stop just over and past the lake.  The system in Switzerland was SO SMOOTH.  

 

We easily found the platform, they had that listed right away, no waiting around like I usually do in the French gares.  Generally there I’m having to wait until about twenty minutes until the train arrives, then you rush on in a big group of people to your platform.  With the Swiss train, we knew which platform it was when we arrived, so we just walked to the platform after grabbing snacks.  (The alpine herbs flavored chips are a must if you like chips lol, and the wine came with a little cup so you could enjoy it on the train.)

 

 

While on the trains

First off, the trains are beautiful.  All of the trains I was on in Switzerland were SO clean and looked relatively new.  The design was really streamlined too, I dunno it was just all around really nice.  Super comfortable as well; it was pretty cold that day and I appreciated how warm it was.  I went to the second floor and picked a seat where I could watch the screen that was close to the ceiling.  Here’s one of the screens you can see while waiting near the doors on the main floor.  Can I just note here how cohesive these designs are throughout the train/app/everything?  It all matches, so the experience just flows intuitively.  Aren’t the Swiss trains gorgeous in their minimalism??  I can’t handle it.

Map of the connecting train station.

It had a nice minified view of the route, and I could coordinate this with my app.  It let me know how long before the next route, and there were announcements that I heard in French, German, and English.  So I felt like after I got off the train, that I’d been a little overly worried considering how absolutely easy it was.  I was SUPER nervous about the connection we had that was supposedly only seven minutes.

Zoomed in view of the map of the connecting train station for more clarity on services available and route to next platform.

But the great part was that I could look at the map and it showed exactly the route you needed to walk in order to get from one platform to the other.  I wish I’d gotten a better screenshot of the train station map after Geneva, because it had an even more detailed route than the screenshot above.

We wound up with enough time between trains that we waited and I looked at the vending machines. (I’m a bit obsessed with food, if you like that sort of thing go check out some of my other articles.)

One kind of cool thing too was if you had skis you were traveling with, most of the trains had ski racks you could snap them into.

The next day, we took quicker train routes from Bulle to Gruyere.  These trains were equally pretty and new, and had useful screens that displayed the news and the weather.  I think if I’d had to commute on one of those, I’d have been pretty relaxed and happy!  It was a great experience overall.  The app was useful, I was able to quickly check the next train when we were in Gruyere, so I could kind of maximize our time in Gruyere before we had to head back to Valence. 

Side note, if you take a trip through Switzerland heading to Geneva from the east, take it during the sunset if you can.  Seriously, the sunset going over Lake Geneva was probably one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen.

Neat Unique Features:

I didn’t get to use this but thought it was awesome.  Let’s say you’re in a town and you want to just hop on the next train, but you’re not sure if you want to get off on one stop or the next.  You can go to one screen, hit a toggle button once you’re on the train, and when you want to get off, you hit the button again and it records and pays for your fare that way.  Totally flexible, no need to reserve or even know where you’re going lol.  You just hop on and off, super simple!

Commuter Feature:

They have a nifty commuter feature you can use if you go somewhere regularly.  You pick your start and end points, and you can choose which days that you go there, so it can send you notifications if there are any delays on that route.  I haven’t tried it but definitely fantasized about how nice it would be to use compared to driving!

Summary of SBB Mobile

Absolutely the best experience I’ve had with any travel app (including airlines).  I’m so jealous I don’t get to use it for commuting every day because it aids in having such a nice experience.  One design note: they never use a hamburger menu, and they don’t need it.  The way they have the icons at the bottom, and the modes at the top are fantastic.  Simple to pick up and understand right away, and easy to use with one hand while traveling.  Absolutely love it.  I have wanted to believe there was a way to avoid a hamburger menu and not have to reinvent the wheel or be overwhelming to a user, and this proved it was possible.  It kind of naturally flows well, so new users can quickly find what they need.

 

Amtrak

So I’m an American, and I’ve been on a few Amtraks before, I think all of those trips were either prior to smart phones or at least when smart phones were kinda useless. This was my first experience using the Amtrak application.

So my experience here with train apps is based on unfortunately using the first two apps I just mentioned from SNCF and SBB.  Which, sorry, the comparison here between the first two and this one is like someone saying “I have chocolate!”, and instead finding out it’s actually just white chocolate.  Yeah I’m going to make that ridiculous comparison cause chocolate is on my mind.  SNCF Connect is like French chocolate, it’s well crafted and a nice experience.  SBB Mobile, definitely like Swiss chocolate, luxe and smooth.  Amtrak is like white chocolate, it’s pretty looking but then you get into it and it’s just not quite there.  It doesn’t totally suck but it’s not exactly what you need.

Before you think I’m being sassy, hear me out.

Booking the tickets

 

Home page upon opening the app.

When opening the app, the user can see different ads and promotions along with the navigation on the bottom.  Most of the links that are in the More section are just links that open the browser to their website.  In the upper right corner we have the little train plus time icon, which allows you to check statuses quickly of trains, and the mail icon that will direct you to any messages about upcoming trips.  I understand why all of this is on the home page, but if it were up to me I’d probably want to just narrow it down to My Trips as the home page. 

On the My Trips page, you can see upcoming trips, or book a new trip.

If you tap My Trips, you can see any upcoming trips scheduled or if there are none scheduled it will prompt you to book a new one.  If I had a train trip in progress, that would be the default view of that card.  Let’s say I had a current trip I was on, and an upcoming return, I could go up to the top and toggle to the Upcoming card view to see those trips.

From here, we can choose the Departure and Arrival stations, add the departure or return date/time, add travelers, and add discount codes.

Booking the train is pretty easy, it shows some fields and search items, similar to the other two apps’ search features.

View of choosing the city and station.  You can star/favorite a station here, and you can see the station acronyms.  Useful!

When you tap the search bar for the destination or arrival station, you are brought to this list of available stations.  I like that there are the station acronyms to the far right, that can help determine if you’re headed to the right one if there are several stations in the city you’re visiting.

If you select Map at the top of the last page, you get directed to the map view which shows train and bus stations via icons.

The map view is useful, you can see all of the stations along with bus stations as well.

Comparative view of each ticket/time available, with Lowest Price indicators.

So they have these cards here in a list, that you can see the times, prices, if it’s direct or multiple trains.  I kind of like how minimal it is, easy enough to see which ones are better than others based on looking at the list.  Honestly it looks nice and modern too!

Little Notes:

I wish there were more availability for trips.  It’d be nice if it told you what the Hiawatha line was, or anything about the types of trains you were taking.  I was going from Milwaukee to Michigan, with a stop in Chicago.  So I was going through a few systems of trains, which I only vaguely understand.  It would be nice if there wasn’t that learning curve there.  At least with the French system, I didn’t really have to understand what systems I’d be using but I could at least get “Oh, this isn’t high speed cause it’s a commuter train.”.  SBB had a little bit of that learning curve issue as well, but it really didn’t get in my way.  For the above example, since I was taking a trip during the afternoon through evening, I wanted to know if I could get food on the train.  They said that the Hiawatha lines had a cafe with certain food options, where other trains in other lines had other food options or no cafe.  It would have been great to have a little dropdown section that gave more info on the train so I knew what to expect.  It could list amenities like the cafe, or give a diagram of the train type.  This is useful to help a user know if it’s a double decker train (let’s assume someone with a minor injury but not full disability wants to ensure they don’t have to climb stairs as an example in the case where a train has limited seats available), or maybe a user wants to be sure they’re going on a newer train model.  Not a huge issue, but would be nice.

Another thing, I’d like to know why I’m paying a premium for first class, or why one trip is cheap or the other is expensive.  That wasn’t entirely clear to me based on the app.  I’d like to know more about the stations I’m visiting.  I had to do a lot of side googling while getting my tickets just to be sure I knew what I was getting, and for whatever reason you can find more about their services and the trains by googling for pages on their site.

Catching the trains

So I’ll mention here that the first train I was going to take was cancelled about two hours ahead of time.  It was first delayed, then suddenly cancelled.  Luckily I had been checking the app a little neurotically, because the notification via SMS they sent about the fact that the train was now a bus, was later than the boarding time.  In fact, I only got an update about the status when I was actually ON the bus that replaced the train.  Here’s what irritated me:

View of the status of the upcoming train.

They give you a train status.  It was a little green dot with a description.  It said the train was now on time.  But then there was this warning kind of message underneath all of that in another text box element that said that the train was cancelled and was now a bus.  There wasn’t really a way to see what was going on other than this message that conflicted with the status message above it.  I contacted support; you had to text a number (the app wouldn’t let you actually click on the number to navigate out to your messages, the least they could have done, you had to remember it and type it out in your messaging app of choice.)  The messaging system was someone confirming the same status of the train, which the customer service person said was identical to the weird “It’s on time” status thing.  I sent them a screenshot with the bus note asking to clarify, and they never responded.

THANKFULLY I had gotten there early, because a guy had taken the passengers waiting for the train onto a bus.  This was from Milwaukee to Chicago’s Union Station. 

We got to Union Station with enough time for me to get my bearings and figure out where my train was going.  After having done Paris’s train stations in another language and their confusing way of dealing with the train lines and numbers, I felt battle hardened and ready.  It wasn’t too difficult there, they had a few signs up and there were only a handful of trains actually departing around when I was leaving.  By the way, Union Station is an incredible building from a beautiful era of American architecture, particularly in Chicago.  You’ll probably recognize the station if you’ve seen The Untouchables.  They were under construction near the platforms, but it was still easy to get around.  They had staff everywhere, which was helpful and they were pleasant when I interacted with them.  The signs were easy to read, no real issues there.

What would have been really awesome, is if the Amtrak app would have had a map of the stations, so I could figure out where I was going while I was on my first “train”, particularly because it was under construction.

If you want to search for a train status (perhaps for someone else you’re picking up from the train station) you can check via searching the Departure and Arrival cities.

On the Train Status page, you can either do a search via the By Station option or By Train Number.  It’s nice they let you do it via the station, I assume it might be good for either the above scenario I mention, or in the case that you miss a train and need to pick up another.

While On the Train

So I got on my train, seats are first come first served as long as you’re in the right class of car.  Whatever, not a problem, however I would almost feel better if I could check the seats ahead of time if I’m paying for business/first class.  Or if I could check out what kind of train I’m on, or where exactly everything is on the train.  I will say also, the trains on the first leg of my trip felt really old.  I’m wondering if they just neglect the Hiawatha line because I have seen some nice photos of the newer lines out east.  But unfortunately every time I’ve been on a the trains between MKE and Michigan, something’s been broken.

Anyways back to the app, you can show the conductor your ticket.  That’s about all the app does while you’re on the train.  It does say that there IS a cafe, but you have to google what line you’re on (Hiawatha for example), and then see if they have a menu on their website.  So that’s something you can technically do with the website, but I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have that as a little link on the voyage card in the app.  Maybe because of what happened on my return train, which was on the newest train I was on, the kitchen was broken.  I don’t get it lol, it looked like a newer train!

The cafe was okay, they had alcohol and the food came in a cute lil box with an Amtrak train on it.  Bonus points for the train box.

Summary of Amtrak

A note about my above complaints about Amtrak.  I totally understand that there are some things that are out of the control of the staff and are problems of maybe infrastructure or old equipment.  Not my place to complain there, and truly all of the Amtrak staff I interacted with were super helpful and pleasant.  I really hope that Amtrak’s new high speed trains that are coming out are awesome, and that they do a little upgrade to the app at that point. (Forgive me if they have by now and I haven’t had the privilege of checking it out yet!)  I think if they could take some of the information/features that they have on their website, and integrate it with the app, it would absolutely upgrade the app’s experience and usability.  I think the general layout of the app is clean, modern looking, and it’s easy enough to use.  But I think with those points above, you could absolutely add those items to the same app, and not have to do a whole overhaul of the UI.  Just a few drop downs and extra elements (map components for example) and I think it would be on par with SNCF Connect.

 

Final Thoughts

To sum it all up, I think there are some companies out there that are really thinking about how we travel using trains and there are others that just need some additional components and updating.  I would love to check out the Japanese train system or some of the other trains around Europe to see what other cool features they have in their train apps.