About this journey

Linz Hauptbahnhof is Austria's busiest station outside Vienna, recording 40,800 passengers daily in 2018/2019. The present station building, designed by Wilhelm Holzbauer and completed between 2002 and 2004, serves as a hub for long-distance services as well as a terminus of the Pyhrn Railway. From here the journey heads south and east toward Kleinreifling along timetable route 130, a corridor with roots in the Rudolf Railway, whose main line was opened between 1868 and 1873 as Austria's third north–south Alpine crossing.

The Rudolf Railway was built by the Mährischen Eisenbauunternehmen of the Klein brothers under chief engineer Otto Thienemann. Financial pressures following the economic crisis of 1873 forced the company into administration in 1880, and it was nationalised in 1884. After nationalisation, the Amstetten–Kastenreith branch was upgraded so that traffic between Vienna and Carinthia could be routed via the Western Railway and the Rudolf Railway. The route through the Ybbs and Enns valley retains an hourly service today, though most workings on the Amstetten–Kleinreifling corridor have been operated by Siemens Desiro class 4744 units since December 2017, making an ÖBB class 4024 working on this line relatively uncommon. Kleinreifling sits at a historic junction on this long Alpine corridor.