About this journey

Wörgl Hauptbahnhof sits at the junction where the Salzburg–Tyrol Railway meets the southern approach into the Alps. From here the journey follows the Tauern Railway, a line conceived as part of the 'New Alpine Railways' programme that the k.k. Railway Ministry launched from 1901 onwards under Heinrich von Wittek. Built by the Imperial Royal Austrian State Railways as a public alternative to the private Southern Railway via Semmering, the line opened for passengers and freight in 1909, with Emperor Franz Joseph I having ceremonially inaugurated the first section as far as Bad Gastein station on 20 September 1905.

The Tauern Railway is 79 km long and climbs the High Tauern range of the Central Eastern Alps with a maximum incline of 2.5%, passing through the 8,371-metre Tauern Tunnel that pierces the Alpine crest. Electrified between 1933 and 1935 on Austria's 15 kV 16.7 Hz AC system, the line was progressively widened to double track from 1969 onwards, with viaducts and straightenings added to handle the traffic of one of Europe's most important north–south trunk routes. A further double-track bridge in the Gastein Valley entered service in 2016. The route ends at Schwarzach-St. Veit station, the southern gateway of a line that moves from the Inn valley foothills through high Alpine terrain shaped by more than a century of continuous engineering.