About this journey

Jenbach station sits at a rare convergence: it is the only station in Austria where three different railway gauges meet — standard gauge, metre gauge, and 760 mm — making it a fitting starting point for one of the country's most distinctive lines. From here the metre-gauge Achensee Railway departs, climbing into the Tyrolean mountains on a route with a history stretching back to 8 June 1889, when the line was officially opened by the Soenderop Company of Berlin.

The Achensee Railway holds a singular distinction: it is Europe's oldest cog railway still operated by steam. The open passenger coaches that accompany the journey were built in Graz in 1889, the same year the line opened. The original proposal for the railway was supported by the monastery at Fiecht, which owned the Achensee and operated steam boats on the lake — a connection that shaped the line's purpose from the outset. In 1916 the railway was extended to a terminal station serving the steamboat pier directly, placing the cog railway and lake transport in step with one another. Beyond Eben the gradient eases and the line descends gently to its final stop at Achensee, where the locomotive has run round at Eben to haul the coaches on this upper section — a working practice unchanged in its essentials across the line's long history.