About this journey

Bolzano station, opened on 16 May 1859 as Bozen-Gries Bahnhof upon completion of the Trento–Bolzano section, is where the Brenner Railway begins its climb toward the Alps. The line was designed under the Austrian Empire in the mid-19th century to connect Tyrol with northern Italy, and when the Bolzano–Brenner section opened on 24 August 1867, it completed the full route from Verona to Innsbruck. It was the first through railway line to cross the Alps — and the second mountain railway built within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, after the Semmering Railway.

The ascent is steep by any measure: the track holds a maximum grade of 31 per thousand, with curves as tight as 264 metres in radius. To manage the climb, major tunnel works were completed on the Italian side in the 1990s, including the 13,159-metre Sciliar Tunnel, opened in 1994, and the 7,267-metre Pflersch Tunnel, opened in 1999. The journey ends at Brenner station, sitting at 1,371 metres above sea level — the highest point on both the ÖBB and Ferrovie dello Stato standard-gauge networks. Here, the electrical system changes from Italy's 3,000 V DC to Austria's 15,000 V AC at 16.7 Hz, a frontier that has long defined operations at this mountain border crossing.