About this journey

The journey begins at Wien Hauptbahnhof, a through station that became fully operational in December 2015, replacing the old Wien Südbahnhof terminus at a construction cost of around €987 million. Its five island platforms and ten platform faces sit beneath canopies roughly 210 metres in length, and from here the North railway line — the Nordbahn — heads north across the Danube at Wien Handelskai, passing major junctions near Wien Floridsdorf and Wien Süßenbrunn.

The Nordbahn stretches 83.1 kilometres from Vienna to Břeclav and carries a dual electrification: 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC on the Austrian side, switching to 25 kV 50 Hz AC once the line crosses into the Czech Republic near Bernhardsthal. The line was built by the Emperor Ferdinand North Railway company as part of the Warsaw–Vienna railway, and Břeclav station itself opened on 6 June 1839 as Lundenburger Bahnhof — one of the earliest stops on the first locomotive-hauled railway in Austria-Hungary. North of Gänserndorf the route follows the Morava river before crossing the border, then continues 5.1 kilometres into Břeclav. That station is today an important international junction on two pan-European corridors, with lines radiating toward Brno, Prague, Přerov, and Bratislava — a contrast to the urban departure from one of Central Europe's most recently rebuilt city terminals.