About this journey

Praha hlavní nádraží, the starting point of this journey, opened on 14 December 1871 as Franz Josef Station, inaugurating Emperor Franz Joseph Railway service toward Benešov, Tábor and the south. Its roofed platform hall — a two-nave steel arched structure completed in 1905–1906, spanning 2 x 33.3 m, rising 18 m and stretching 233 m — remains one of the defining features of the station, which recorded more than 53 million passengers in 2014 alone. Southbound trains leave through the Vinohradský tunnel, a third bore completed between 1983 and 1989 that channels traffic out of the city on the corridor toward České Budějovice.

The route covers approximately 120 km south through Bohemia, arriving at České Budějovice station in the Vltava valley at its confluence with the Malše river. The station sits at the junction of an international corridor linking Prague with Linz in Austria and several domestic lines. Railways have served this city since 1868, when the Emperor Franz Joseph Railway opened a direct international line through it, followed in 1871 by the Empress Elisabeth Railway. České Budějovice also commemorates an earlier era of rail history: the Budweis–Linz Horse-Drawn Railway, built in 1825–1832, was the second oldest public railway line in continental Europe. The journey thus moves between two cities whose railway histories stretch back to the earliest decades of Central European rail.