About this journey

The journey departs from Wien Hauptbahnhof, Austria's busiest long-distance railway station, handling around 268,000 daily commuters. The station replaced the old Wien Südbahnhof terminus and became fully operational in December 2015, having been built from the outset with through platforms rather than terminal tracks — a design that allows the station to handle more trains on substantially less space than its predecessors.

The route south runs along the Southern Railway, the corridor that links Vienna to Graz and continues onward into Slovenia. At the far end of the journey, Graz Hauptbahnhof stands on a site with a long railway history: the first station here opened in 1847, a larger replacement was built between 1871 and 1876, and that building was destroyed in bombing raids in 1945. The current station was completed in 1956, and its main ticket hall is now a listed building. Since 2010, the station has been upgraded under an ongoing modernisation scheme. The future Koralm Railway will route all international traffic from Vienna to Italy through Graz, further increasing its strategic role. The ride thus moves between two of Austria's most significant rebuilt stations, connected by one of the country's principal international rail corridors.