About this journey

Selzthal station sits at the junction where the Enns Valley Railway meets lines continuing east toward Vienna, and it is here that this journey aboard an ÖBB 4744 begins. ÖBB itself traces its origins to 1923, when the Bundesbahn Österreich was formed as successor to the Imperial Royal Austrian State Railways, before being reformed again in 1947 after wartime incorporation into the Deutsche Reichsbahn. The network it operates today spans 9,740 km of track, energised throughout by a 15 kV 16.7 Hz electrification system, and held together by 247 tunnels and 6,207 bridges.

The journey ends at Wien Westbahnhof, a station whose history runs from imperial ambition to wartime destruction and quiet reinvention. First opened in 1858 as the terminus of the k.k. privilegierte Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Bahn, it was bombed and burned in April 1945, demolished in 1949, and rebuilt to reopen in 1952. That postwar structure, with its half-timbered roof construction, now holds protected-monument status. Since December 2015, all ÖBB long-distance services were re-routed via the Lainzer Tunnel to Wien Hauptbahnhof, leaving Westbahnhof to serve commuter traffic and the intercity trains of private operator WESTbahn. The station that once anchored Austria's western main line now marks a quieter end to a journey that began deep in the alpine interior.