About this journey

St. Veit an der Glan station sits at the southern end of a long Alpine crossing that the k.k. priv. Kronprinz Rudolf-Bahn Gesellschaft began opening in 1868, completing its main line by 1873 — making the Rudolfsbahn Austria's third north–south Alpine railway, alongside the Semmering and Brenner routes. Built by the Mährischen Eisenbauunternehmen of the Klein brothers under chief engineer Otto Thienemann, the line passed through financial difficulty after the economic crisis of 1873, entered administration in 1880, and was nationalised in 1884.

Today this corridor carries far more than regional traffic. All Railjet and EuroCity services on the Vienna–Klagenfurt–Villach route share the tracks with freight trains bound for Italy and Slovenia. Since December 2011 the stretch between St. Veit an der Glan and Villach via Feldkirchen has also formed S-Bahn Kärnten line S2, a local service frequency built on the Kärnten-Takt cycle introduced in December 2008. The ÖBB Class 4024 Talent unit seen here therefore runs on infrastructure used simultaneously by some of Europe's principal international expresses.

Villach Hauptbahnhof, where the journey ends, reflects that international weight: twelve tracks — four of them sidings — serve EuroCity and EuroNight trains connecting to Munich, Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Venice via Tarvisio, while the station links the Southern Railway toward Vienna with the Tauern Railway toward Salzburg.