About this journey

The journey departs from Wien Hauptbahnhof, a through station that replaced the former Wien Südbahnhof terminus and became fully operational in December 2015. Its five island platforms sit beneath canopies roughly 210 metres long, and the infrastructure beneath them incorporated around 100 km of new track and around 300 switches and crossings. With around 268,000 daily commuters, it is Austria's busiest long-distance railway station.

The Railjet heads south on the Southern Railway, the spine connecting Vienna to Graz and continuing onward into Slovenia. Graz Hauptbahnhof has anchored this corridor since 1847, when the city's first railway station opened here. A larger replacement was built on the same site between 1871 and 1876, though that building was totally destroyed in bombing raids in 1945; the current station was completed in 1956. Since 2010, it has been expanded and modernised as part of an international transport hub programme. The station's role is set to grow further when the Koralm Railway is completed, at which point all international traffic from Vienna to Italy will pass through Graz. The two termini frame a journey that moves from one of Austria's most ambitious modern rail projects to a historic gateway station rebuilt from wartime rubble.