About this journey

Lienz station serves as the western anchor of the Austrian Drava Valley, where trains depart eastward and westward through the Tyrolian Alps. The line running west toward Sillian and on to the Italian border forms part of a route with deep historical roots: the Drava Valley Railway and the Puster Valley Railway were both opened on 20 November 1871, built with state financial support to link the Southern Railway with the Brenner Railway. After the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy in 1918, the line found itself divided across multiple states, losing the administrative unity it had held under a single imperial network.

The section covered in this journey — from Lienz westward to Sillian — runs as single track and is electrified at 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC, the standard for the Austrian portion of the route. The system-change point lies further west at Innichen, where the Italian Puster Valley Railway operates at 3 kV DC. It was only with the acquisition of Stadler FLIRT multi-system units by the state of South Tyrol in 2013 that continuous regional services across this electrification boundary could be re-established — the ETR 170 seen throughout this footage being among those units. The journey from Lienz to Sillian thus captures a corridor that has moved from Habsburg strategic ambition through decades of border complexity to modern cross-border operation.