Ski resorts in the alps

I'm interested in planning a ski trip to the alps for this winter. I've heard how wonderfull the European rail system is, but haven't been able to find a site that lists the proper information. Which ski resorts in the ALPS are conveniently close to the rail system? What airports have rail stations? What would be a good set of four or five resorts if I wanted to go to a different one each day.
Do the European railroads have official websites? I've seen a lot of third party pages selling passes, but have not been able to find any pages operated by railroads themselves?
Can I purchase tickets at the station or are advanced reservations required?
How does the cost and convenience of rail compared to renting a car?

Try this site. It is run by German railways (Deutschebahn) but contains information on most rail and other modes of transport.

http://promo.bahn.de/sel?cmd=ifr&prf=au ... .225046319&

I never set foot on European trains without the Thomas Cook timetable, the Red book.
Google Thomas Cook to see where you can get it.

There are ski resorts in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Italy (also in the Pyrenees in Spain, France and Andorra).
Note that as the climate changes snow is getting more uncertain and some of the lower slopes may lack snow when you want to go.

How much money do you want to spend? Almost every top notch ski resort (Gstaad, Zermat, Davos, Sankt Moritz, to mention a few) in Switzerland can be reached by train of not by the SBB that with one of the smaller (sometimes narrow gauge railways like the RhB, BOB or MOB) which all run like the proberbly Swiss watch. In France some TGV/Thalys services will bring you almost to the pistes. Most Eurpean Railways have their own web-sites up, I collected quite a few on a yahoo! site which I own/moderate.

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/i ... y_network/

On the more exotic side try Gällivare in Northern Sweden located well above the Arctic circle snow is almost certain. The ski seison runs from mid-October to mid-may I have been told.

Additional information (edited)
After posting my repsonse it became clear that the original posted seems to be new on traveling by rail to Europe. First of all there are many options for non-europeans there is the so called Eurailpass which can be
bought overseas, inside Europe there are

Eurodomio and Interrail:
http://www.interrail.net/

Scanrail
http://www.scanrail.com/

Swiss Pass
http://mct.sbb.ch/mct/en/reiselust/int-gaeste.htm

To mention a few.

At stations one can buy one or two way tickets, local trains do not need seat reservation, an some long distance trains D or Intercity trains seat reservation is possible or reconmended, but all Eurocity and high speed (ICE/Eurostar/Thalis TGV) trains have a surcharge above the standard fare and compulsory seat resrvation.

Airports with rail connections: Schiphol (Amsterdam), Heathrow (London), Paris Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt Main, Arlanda (Stockholm), Kastrup (Copenhagen), Zavetem (Brussel) just the ones that come to my mind.

Gijs

Hello

http://www.railfaneurope.net/ is a very good website providing tons of pictures about european railways.

For informations about each railway go to "European Railway Links", There you will find the official website linked for every country in Europe.

When you are just travelling in switzerland, i recommend to use the swiss pass, there are more railway lines open to use compared to the eurail pass. The eurail pass for example is not valid on the line up to zermatt and on a part of the glacier express.

Train service in Europe is very frequent and mostly reliable. Depents in wich country you are using the train, e.g. italy & france are famous for strikes ;o)

When you take a train which you have to reserve, i recommend to do that early, i work at the zermatt station, often poeple decide 5 minute before the train leaves, that they want to go, and then the train is fully booked...

For further questions, please do not hesitate to reply to this message
cheers

There are other choices as well, but ski areas that I’ve personally been to that you can take a train to and walk to your hotel or inn and to the ski slopes include:

Garmisch-Partinkirchen, Germany
Seefeld, Austria
Zell am Zee, Austria
Chamonix, France
St. Alberg, Austria

Others that I know about but haven’t been to:
Davos, Switzerland
Zermatt, Switzerland

I’m sure there are many others.
And most others have buses to bring you to the slopes from the closest train station.

The European train companies have “snow trains” that leave Friday night and return the following Sunday for 7 days of skiing. This website is in Dutch but you’ll see the place that the trains go to. http://www.alpenexpres.nl/

Let me know if you want any specific advise or have any further questions.

Alan

Also the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Polonia have nice ski ressorts which are connected to the rail system.

Thes ressorts are much cheaper tha the ressorts in the alps...