The first of our two European trips in 2005 is to Bavaria and Austria on the IRT Austria 2005 trip. Coincidentally, I’m sure, this is an interesting time to be visiting these places, since the 60th anniversary of Victory Day in Europe is celebrated (by the German public and various levels of government) on May 8th, while we’re in Munich, and the 50th anniversary of the Austrian Peace Treaty is celebrated the day after we leave Vienna (but preparations are going on while we’re in Vienna). Nonetheless, we’re going to these places to ride trains at least as much as to see the scenery (continuing the exploration of the Alps that we began the previous year in Switzerland) and visit the cities.
This is also our first overseas trip since moving to Tehachapi, so our arrangements for dealing with the 140 miles between Tehachapi and LAX before and (especially) after the international flights are experimental.
At 10:30 am on Thursday, two days before the official start of the tour, we leave home to drive to Los Angeles. Max Bohlmann has kindly offered to let us park our car at his house in Granada Hills, and to drive us to the Van Nuys Flyaway bus terminal where we can take a dedicated airport bus to LAX. After a stop on the way in Acton to have a fast food lunch, we arrive at Max’s house at 12:30 pm. Max joins us in our car, and we drive down to the Flyaway, getting there just in time to miss the 1 pm bus. While Max drives our car back to his house, we purchase tickets for the 1:30 pm bus (which is what I had planned on using) and ride that bus to LAX, arriving at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at 2:10 pm.
Our flight is nominally on “United”, but is in fact operated by Lufthansa (LH453), so we check in at the Lufthansa desk (where Chris’ Passport gets extra unexplained scrutiny) and have the checked baggage X-rayed, pass through security (where a small Allen wrench in my wallet is detected—after many years of being ignored—and confiscated), exchange dollars for Euros at the money exchange, and walk to our gate. Here, we discover that the Euros have vanished, so Chris walks back to the exchange booth to find that some has handed them in, complete with our receipt, with a single 20 Euro note missing.
Our flight departs, on time, at 4:20 pm, and I immediately set my watch forward to 1:20 am, Central European Daylight Time.
After an uneventful, but as always seemingly interminable, flight (I can’t sleep on airplanes), we land in Munich at 12:25 pm, in time to be at the gate and off the plane by 12:40 pm. After reclaiming our bags and passing through Immigration, we make our way to the Die (formerly Deutsches) Bahn (DB) desk, where we have our Eurail Passes validated, and are informed that we can, indeed, use them on the S-Bahn on the way into the center of Munich. We descend to the platforms below, and board the 1:17 pm train (henceforth to be referred to in 24 hour nomenclature) on line S-8 and settle down to wait for it to depart.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-6-05 |
DB |
1317 |
Munich A/P-Hbf |
DB S-Bahn 423 |
N/A |
Munich Airport is quite a distance out of the city to its north-northeast, and is served by an S-bahn line that is powered by overhead electrification at the German standard 15kV AC. The underground airport station faces due west, and the departing single-track line soon surfaces and passes through the Flughafen Besucherpark station, serving an airport-area office park. The line then makes a big sweeping curve to the south, and passes through Hallbergmoos station. There are passing places at each station on the single-track section of the line., After gently curving southwest, the line reaches Ismaning, where the station is underground. From Ismaning, the line heads south-southwest.
There is new track and a new station being built on the S-bahn between the underground station at Ismaning and the station at Unterföhring. South of the latter, a freight line comes in from the west, carrying traffic eastward from the Munich area’s main freight yard at Munich North. The now southbound line passes through Johanneskirchen, Englshalking, and Daglfing. There are passenger car yards on the south side as the line turns west at Munich Ost Junction, a wye at which the freight trains turn east onto the line to Rosenheim. There is a freight yard to the south before Leuchtenbergring station.
The westbound double-track S-bahn line curves gently southwest (following along the north side of the main line tracks) and enters the Ostbahnhof station, where there are main line platforms (on the line east to Rosenheim) to the south of the S-bahn platforms. West of this location, the line turns west-northwest and descends into a subway to cross under the center of the city. On the subterranean section, there are stations with island platforms between the two S-bahn tracks at Rosenheimer Platz on the east side of the Isar River, Isartor on the west side of that river and at the eastern gate of the old city, Marienplatz, under the center of the old city, Karlsplatz at the western gate of the old city, and Munich Hauptbahnhof under the city’s west-facing main station.
The S-Bahn train gets us to the lower level of Munich Hauptbahnhof a little before 2 pm. We have a map showing how to get to our hotel, which turns out to be a short distance down a side street directly across the main street from the south entrance to the Hbf concourse, so we ride the escalator up to the concourse level, cross the entire concourse, exit the station, cross Bahnhofstrasse, and walk the few remaining meters to the hotel. This turns out to be set back in a courtyard, rather than directly on the street, which makes it much quieter than we would otherwise expect.
We check in and are in our room by 2:20 pm. This means we have plenty of time for our planned afternoon excursion to Ottobeuren Abbey, which our tour guide, Werner Schorn, has helped us plan.
Munich Hauptbahnhof comprises three groups of platforms at ground level, along with the S-bahn platforms below on the north side. The three groups of platforms were once three separate stations, with three separate entrances, and the set on the north side (at least) still has its own small concourse adjacent to the inner ends of those platforms, some way further out than the inner ends of the main platforms. Platforms 5-10 are at the outside station on the south side (which we will not use on this trip), platforms 11-26 used by the main line trains in the center are accessed directly from the main concourse that crosses the station at their east end, and platforms 27-36 are in the outside station on the north side. The whole station faces west. The main platforms are under an overall roof, with umbrella sheds on all platforms beyond the end of the overall roof. There is a ticket hall extending eastward from the main concourse, in a building that also includes railway offices and many shops, with U-bahn platforms below the main floor. The whole complex was built in the immediate post WWII years. Beyond the end of the platforms is a tall signal control tower in the center of the station throat, just to the east of the multi-span through girder Hackerbrücke, which crosses the entire station throat. An eponymous S-bahn station lies beneath the bridge, just west of the exit from the S-bahn tunnel.
We find our train runs from the group of platforms across the concourse, on the north side of the station, somewhat further out than the main set of platforms. The next thing that we note is that the locomotive on our train is a diesel, rather than the expected electric. It seems that where we’re going this afternoon is into one of the few remaining non-electrified areas of DB.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-6-05 |
DB |
1451 |
Munich to Buchloe |
DB single-level |
218 diesel |
|
5-6-05 |
DB |
1544 |
Buchloe to Memmingen |
DB DMU 642 |
N/A |
|
5-6-05 |
DB |
1930 |
Memmingen to Ulm |
DB single-level |
|
|
5-6-05 |
DB |
2008 |
Ulm to Munich |
ICE |
400 power |
We start out at the appointed time, pass under the massive Hackerbrücke road bridge crossing the entire station throat, with the equally massive signal control tower next to it and the Hackerbrücke S-Bahn station, beyond the tunnel mouth where the S-Bahn rises to the surface, beyond it. There are carriage yards on the south side of the line beyond the road bridge. Some tracks descend into a duck-under east of a concrete road bridge overhead. The locomotive depot is on the south side, west of that road bridge. In fairly quick succession, the line curving round to the east to München (Munich) Ostbahnhof and Rosenheim departs to the south, adjacent to the S-bahn station at Donnersbergerbrücke, we pass under the eponymous concrete road bridge and a signal bridge, climb up on a flyover and cross to the south side of the remaining main line tracks, pass the Laim S-bahn station where a line curves off to the north, and stop at München-Pasing—an interchange between main lines, suburban lines and S-Bahn lines, which has five platforms serving ten tracks, the southernmost of which is stub-ended at buffer stops at the west end of the station, and a yard to the north.
The main line to Augsburg and beyond heads off west-northwest, and the line to Garmisch-Partenkirchen and (as a secondary line) Innsbruck departs to the south on lines that our line crosses on a flyover. The line west is now a double-track electrified line also used by S-bahn trains, running through fields of rapeseed separated by lines of trees. This segment of line has many S-bahn stations that our train does not stop at, at Leienfelsstrasse, Aubing, Puchheim, Eichenau, where the line curves west-southwest, Fürstenfeldbruck, Buchenau, Schöngeising, Grafrath and Tüchenfeld. Suddenly, we’re in a broad open valley in which the countryside reminds me of the Metropolitan Railway in Buckinghamshire, and reminds Chris of Cincinnati. Only the buildings are different!
Geltendorf, a station with three platforms and five tracks, is the west end of the S-bahn services, and has an S-bahn yard on the south side, west of the station. The depot is on the north side of the tracks. Electric operations also end here, with no catenary west of the station area. East of Geltendorf, a line heads off to the southeast and then south, along the west side of the Ammersee to Diessen and Weilheim. West of Geltendorf, a line heads north to Mering. Our line heads west through Schwabhausen. Kaufering station has buildings on the north side and three platforms serving five tracks, with other DMUs from the south side platforms serving branches to the southeast and northwest of the station. Our line continues west southwest to Buchloe, where a line from Augsburg joins from the north and another line heads off south to Kempten, in addition to the line continuing west to Memmingen.
At Buchloe, a station with three platforms and five tracks, and a signal box on the south side west of the station, we change trains by crossing the platform to a space-age-looking diesel multiple-unit (DMU), 2-cars in length, that takes us the rest of the way to Memmingen on a now single-track line. There is a junction west of Buchloe (with the line south to Kempten), with freight sidings on the north side. Our train takes the more northerly side of the junction. Turkhein station has two platforms and three tracks, while Unterrammingen has a single platform on the north side. After the line curves southwest, and a branch trails in from the north, Mindelheim also has two platforms with three tracks. The line then curvees west again. At Stetten, a single platform on the north side, there are mechanical wires for operating the signals and points, with huge counterbalances on the south side of the track. Sontheim also has a single platform on the north side.
A freight-only line from Ottobeuren trails in from the south at Ungerhausen, a closed station at which our train does not stop. The line turns south as the line from Ulm comes in from the north, to enter Memmingen. At Memmingen, another station with two platforms and three tracks with station buildings on the (now) west side, the promised 4-minute walk to the bus station turns out to be a walk to the end of the platform pedestrian subway, so we catch our 16:44 bus to Ottobeuren with no difficulty, paying our 2.45 euros per person bus fare as we enter.
Reading a guidebook to Munich and the Bavarian Alps on the plane, I had read about the annual custom of erecting and decorating maypoles for May 1st. Here in the Swabian countryside, they are present in profusion, one in every village, usually just outside the church. So it proves to be at Ottobeuren, where there is a tall maypole just outside the main front of the abbey’s basilica church, where we arrive before 5 pm. We have come to Ottobeuren, because this basilica is one of the best-regarded baroque churches in the entire region especially populated with those churches, Bavaria and Austria. We know of this particular church because it was the site of a laser-disc recording of Haydn’s The Creation by Leonard Bernstein, of which we own a copy. What we have seen on that disc impelled us to come here when we had the opportunity.
Ottobeuren Abbey is an operational Benedictine Monastery, whose community dates back to the 8th-century. The present buildings date from the 18th-century, with the monastic square (cloister, behind the church) built 1711-25, domestic buildings at the rear 1724-1731, and administration building on the north side 1739-1742. The church building was started in 1737 and consecrated in 1766 on the approximate centenary of the monastic foundation. Primary architect was Johann Michael Fisher from Munich, stuccoist Johann Michael Feichtmayer from Augsburg, sculptor Johann Christian from Riedlingen, and painters Franz Anton and Johann Jakob Zeller from Reutte in Tyrol. The tabernacle on the High Altar is by goldsmith Georg Ignaz Baur from Augsburg. Some side altarpieces are by Joseph Mages and Januarius Zick. Karl Joseph Riepp from nearby Eldern built the organ.
The basilica-style church is nearly square, being 48 meters from north to south and 43 meters from east to west. As with all basilicas, the floor plan is cruciform. The north front of the church has a pair of towers astride the semi-octagonal main entrance. The main altar is at the south end of the church. The interior of the church is amazingly bright in daylight, even as late in the day as our visit. Almost the entire area of the ceilings is covered in frescos, as are many of the large wall surfaces. Many of the junctures between different wall segment and between walls and ceilings are decorated with ornate stuccos and sculptures.
When we have finished contemplating the interior of the basilica, we walk outside to look for the bus stop to go back to Memmingen. Werner’s instructions referred to a 1-minute walk, but that turns out to mean “cross the street”, and since the bus is not due for another few minutes, we instead walk down to Ottobeuren Marketplace (Marktplatz). I had found the timings to and from this location on my own, and had I understood how close it was to the abbey, I would not have needed Werner’s precise directions. In the marketplace, there is a mechanical sculpture, driven by water, that appears as if it were large fronds waving in the breeze in a regular manner.
The return bus at 17:58 has the same driver as on the way down, so he remembers where we want to go. Back at the Memmingen station, we decide to have dinner at a Chinese Restaurant across the street, where the excellent food turns out to be more than we really want to eat on this travel day. Our return to Munich is by a different route than the one we had come by, so we board a train from Bregenz heading north to Ulm, which connects with ICEs going both directions at Ulm Hauptbahnhof.
The line north from Memmingen to Ulm is a single-track line, passing through closed stations at Heimertingeon, Fellheim, and Pless. A freight-only branch trails in before Kellmünz, which is still open. The line continues north through Altenstadt, Illertissen, Bellenburg, Vöhringen, Senden, where another line trails in from the east, a closed station at Gerlenhofen, and Finngerstrasse, before turning west and joining with the line west from Augsburg at Neu Ulm.
Neu Ulm station has three platforms with five tracks. On the way northwest into Ulm, we admire the cathedral church with its interesting spire, as we cross the bridge over the Danube just east of the station. On the west bank of te river, the line turns north as another line trails in from Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. Ulm station has eleven tracks numbered 1-8, on the through tracks, and 25-27, which are in bays on the east end. We board the ICE heading for Munich via Augsburg (it had started in Berlin many hours earlier).
The line to Munich takes the Augsburg route at Neu Ulm, heading east-northeast through Hersingen, a closed station at Unterfahlheim, Leipheim, Günzburg, which has four platforms with eight tracks, where the line north from Mindelheim trails in, and a closed station at Neuoffingen, where a line heads north and the main line turns southeast. It passes through Offingen, Mindelaltheim, Burgau, and Jettingen, curves almost east through Freihalden, then around a clockwise horseshoe to head southwest and then southeast again to Dinkelscherben. Following the latter, a branch curves away southwest and the main oine turns east through Mödishofen, Kutzenhausen and Gessertshausen, where a line trails in from the southwest, and turns northeast through Diedorf, Westheim, Neüsass and Augsburg Hirblingerstrasse. East of the latter, the line turns south, joining with a line coming in from the north, and passes through Augsburg Oberhausn into Augsburg Hauptnahnhof.
Augburg has six platforms with ten tracks. Here, there are connecting trains in multiple directions for passengers off the train we’re on. An unelectrified line heads south to Buchloe as the main line turns east through Augsburg Haunstetterstrasse and then turns south again at Augsburg Hichzoll, where an unelectrified line continues east. The main line passes through Kissing and Mering, where a branch heads south to Geltendorf, and turns southeast through Althegnenberg and Haspelmoor, and then turns east through Nannhofen, Malching, Maisach (where a separate S-bahn line starts) and past S-bahn stations at Gernlinden, Esting and Olching. A freight-only line to the North Yard heads straight ahead as the main line turns southeast, past S-bahn stations at Grössenzell, Lochhausen and Langwied before reaching Munich-Pasing and retracing our earlier route into the Hauptbahnhof.
In the gathering darkness, we return to Munich at speeds typically in the 125-130 km/h range, but including stretches at 160 km/h. arriving at Munich at 21:30, and then return to our hotel for a good night’s sleep.
Munich (München, the city of monks) is the capital of Bavaria (Bayern), which was an independent German-speaking kingdom until the unification of Germany in 1871.
The old town of Munich is clearly defined on three sides (east, south, west) by the location on the old city walls and the boulevards that run along the area of the erstwhile moat outside of the walls. The east side of old town is hard by the west bank of the Isar River, running north to flow into the Danube. The old town area is a curious mélange of old buildings, reconstructed old buildings (after WWII damage), and new buildings (replacing those destroyed in WWII). While the newer buildings are quite obvious (they’re generally in 1950s “modern” style), it is often quite difficult to tell which of the old buildings are original, and which are (at least in part) modern reconstruction. At least one church within the old town area (Damenstift St. Anna) is an exquisite example of (reconstructed) baroque architecture and interior decoration.
The Gunetzrhainer brothers built Damenstift St. Anna for the Salesian order of sisters in the 18th-century. The west façade is in the late baroque style, as is the interior, which was executed by fresco painter Cosmas Damian Asam and sculptor and stuccoist Egid Quirin Asam, brother of Cosmas Damian. This is a single nave church with side arches, behind which lay the side chapels, and a presbytery at one end. Among its interior decorations is a striking life-sized fully three-dimensional sculpture of the Last Supper, placed to the left of the main altar, and a sculpture of the Crucifixion on a pillar to the right. After total destruction in WWII, the paintings were reconstructed, in sepia tones only, as the only photographs available were in black & white. Nonetheless the overall effect, and especially that of the intersecting interior spaces, is quite striking.
The Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) was built in brick between 1458 and 1478, to a design by Jörg of Halspach. The onion cupolas on the two western towers were not executed until 1525. The carved doors by Ignaz Gunther date from 1770/72. The church as it exists today was reconstructed between 1946 and 1953, following substantial damage in the WWII bombing of the city. Many of the artworks and furnishings that had been removed for safekeeping during the war were not returned until the 1990s, when the interior acquired its current appearance. Some of the stained glass is original, from around 1500. Many of the sculptures and paintings are from the 16th-century, but newly placed in the cathedral in the 1990s.
The cathedral is 109 m long, 41.5 m wide and 55 m high to the apex of the roof. The towers are 98.5 m high, and equipped with eight bells dating variously from 1442 to 1617, with one replacement from 1958. The nave is divided into three by rows of columns extending its entire length. The most striking feature of the nave is the large stained-glass window at its east end.
The Residenz is a complex of buildings that together comprise the palace(s) of the Wittelsbach rulers in their capital city. Construction on this site outside the original city walls began in 1385 with the construction of the New Castle, which continued to be expanded until about 1570 and is today almost completely obliterated by the later developments on the site. In 1550, the first palace buildings outside of the walls of the New Castle were built. Some of the early buildings, which today are buried in the middle of the complex of buildings, are known as the finest early renaissance buildings north of the Alps.
The facades of today’s Residenz, seen daily by the workaday Munich public, date from the expansions of the palace complex made at the behest of Ludwig I in the 1830s, most of the later additions not having been reconstructed following the massive damage of WWII. The most impressive of the exterior spaces in the Residenz is the Fountain Court, an elongated octagon that is laid at a 45-degree angle to the exterior facades of today’s complex, with the Wittelsbach Fountain in its center. This exterior space runs along the complete length of the original renaissance building in the complex, the Hall of Antiquities. Adjacent to the Fountain Court are the dignified Emperor’s Court, the Chapel Court and the Apothecary Court, delightful exterior spaces completely hidden from the outside.
The Deutsches Museum’s Railways Hall contains displays describing the history of railways, an exhibit of signals, and another of track and trackwork. The full-size exhibits of preserved equipment include:
The extensive Munich tramway network provides much of the public transport in Munich. Only about half of the maximum route size is still in service, with ten lines operating in 2005, mainly serving the west side of the city, the north, and the east side across the Isar. The only tramlines heading south are on the east side of that river. Tramlines do not enter the old town from east or west, but go around it to the south on the line of the old city walls. Many of the tramlines that have been abandoned have been replaced by U-bahn lines, and in some cases by the inner portions of S-bahn lines, both of which do serve the old town directly. The newest trams are from 2001-2002. A segment of lines 16 and 17 was abandoned from 1983 to 1994.
As is normal on the first few days of a trip into a far distant time zone, we’re awake early on the first day (although the birds outside the window have been singing for hours), in time for the start of the included breakfast, after which we head out for a walk around the old part of the city by ourselves. I have in mind at least a visit to a baroque church which I’m sure will not be on the promised walking tour later in the day. Walking east on the Bahnhofstrasse, I photograph some of Munich’s trams. At Karlsplatz, where we must cross the boulevard located where the city’s walls used to be, we use the pedestrian subway (and U-Bahn/S-Bahn station concourse) to cross to the east side, where we pass through the Karlstor—the erstwhile city gate that still crosses the street in this inner-city pedestrian area. In the inner city, we are stuck by the difference, easily seen, between those buildings that survived the air raids at the end of WWII and those that were built to replace ruined buildings in the postwar years. We turn south down a side street to find the Damenstift St. Anna—the little church on a southeast street corner that has wonderful carved front door and a glorious baroque interior.
As the parishioners gather for a 9 am service, we leave to continue our walk around the old city. We walk a bit further east, and then turn north to look at the west front of the Frauenkirche (women’s church) that serves as the cathedral in this city. Mindful of the promise that this will be on the walking tour later in the day, we then make our way back to Karlspatz by a different route.
Our large suitcase had become damaged somewhere along the way, and since we’re not sure of its longevity on this trip, we take the opportunity to buy a new one at the Woolworth’s in the U-Bahn/S-Bahn concourse below Karlsplatz. We then take this back to the room, stopping at a kiosk in the Hbf concourse to buy coffee and apfelsaft on the way. Later in the morning, we return to the Hbf to go out to the end of the platforms and watch trains. George Drury in his Rail Enthusiast’s Guide to Germany had recommended an hour spent watching trains at the end of these platforms to get the full flavor of the passenger-service offerings of the German Railways. It takes only half an hour for me to conclude that further taking of pictures of the very frequent comings and goings in this station throat would consume an excessive amount of my available storage space for digital photographs, while an adequate flavor of the operations had been obtained.
Several private companies, in addition to DB, serve Munich Hauptbahnhof. We see an ALEX train from Munich to Obersdorf, with a diesel locomotive built by Henschel that is similar to an Austrian class 2060, and a Bayerischen OberlandBahn (BOB) DMU, operated by Connex. There is an S-bahn train through the western portal of its tunnel, either east or west, approximately every two minutes.
At the appointed 12:30 pm, we repair to the hotel bar to meet our tour group colleagues, along with Werner, prior to heading out on the promised walking tour. Two of the tour group members—Hamp and Sue Miller—we already know, since they were on last year’s tour of Switzerland, while another —David Minnerly—had been mentioned to us by Bob and Shirley Carter on that tour. The others we will come to know as this tour progresses.
By the time we start on the walking tour, rain had set in. We head east, as expected, in the same direction as our private walk this morning. Although Werner had apologized for a recent injury that had slowed his walking speed (hah!), it is clear before we reach Karlsplatz that some group members will not be able to keep up with him. As Werner stops to explain to them that we’re going to the Marienplatz, some of us decide to continue in that direction and wait for the others to arrive there. Chris and I, along with Bob Miller and Ken Steele, do just that, and take our pictures of the Marienplatz and the Rathaus with its animated clock sculptures (whose operations we had missed since they takes place only in late morning), while trying to avoid the rain.
After half an hour, it becomes clear that Werner and the rest of the group are not arriving any time soon (It turns out they had stopped in a model train emporium to avoid the worst of the rain), the four of us walk over to the Frauenkirche to see if the group is there, and on finding that it is not, go our separate ways. For Chris and me, that means half a hour inside the church, followed by a walk up to the Residenz and around its exterior, followed by a tram ride back to the hotel on line 19, stopping in the station on the way to make our reservations for the train back from Vienna to Munich on May 20th. (We had held off making these reservations until we knew whether we had had time to go to Ottobeuren the day before.)
In the evening, the group walks over to the lower-level concourse below the Hbf (which also serves as a way of crossing beneath the busy Bahnhofstrasse), and takes two underground (U-Bahn) lines, U2 and U3, north to Olympia Park (site of the 1972 summer Olympic Games), where we eat dinner in the restaurant at the top of Olympia Tower on the grounds. Unfortunately, a weather front come through while we’re up there, so the restaurant does not revolve while there is still enough light to take pictures. The time is quite late (11:30 pm) by the time we’re back at the hotel and ready for bed.
After breakfast this morning, the group walks over to the tram stops in front of the east end of the Hbf building, to wait for a private “historic” tram that will take us on a tour of some of the tram lines in the city. It transpires that some members of the group, including Bob Kerker (who will become known as “little Bob” due to his stature) and Dave Wiley have been riding trams since they got here, a day or two ago. While we wait for the tram, Bob Kerker, on discovering my English origins, engages me in conversation on WWII and Churchill (appropriate, since this is the 60th anniversary of VE-day).
Our “historic” tram is from the 1960s. It takes us north and then northwest from the station, out to the end of line 17, including a photo-stop among the trees at a spur located within a park along the way, which we back out of after a service tram has passed, then back another way that brings us along the north side of the railway lines into the Hbf, where we make another photo-stop on a spur next to a large beer garden where concerts are often held, across from the Hackerbrücke, accessed by means of the east leg of a wye on a street where the cobblestones date from 1928. Then, we head east, diverting (as is required by the layout) around to route of the former city walls along the southwest, south, and southeast sides of the old city) until we’re on the east side of the Isartor—the old city gate facing east to the adjacent Isar River, a tributary of the Danube. We then head east across the river to the eastern end of lines 17 and 18, passing a huge column with a golden Angel of Peace on the top, returning on a different route that passes by the so-called English Garden and then joins route 19 to return us to the hotel the same way Chris and I had ridden the day before.
Our specific route is (with line numbers for the lines normally operating on that part of our route):
After arranging with Werner to meet the rest of the group at the Deutsches Museum along the route of this morning’s tour) at 2:15 pm, Chris and I go to the ticket window in the Hbf to make our reservations for the return train from Vienna to Munich on Friday, May 20th. We then get drinks at the kiosk, and return to our room. Werner is taking the rest of the group members to validate their Eurail Passes at the Hbf before heading for the museum, so Chris and I take the opportunity to walk over the St. Paul’s Church, southwest of the hotel, before taking the tram over to the museum. We’re a few minutes late getting there (due to just missing a tram with a 20-minute frequency on a Sunday), but Werner is waiting with our tickets, and we soon see other group members inside.
After careful perusal of the railway exhibits, including some preserved steam locomotives, and a few others, Chris and I decide not to visit the remainder of the museum. Ken Steele, on the other hand, is fascinated by the electrical engineering exhibits that remind him of the early days of his career in the power generating industry. Hamp and Sue Miller, and some of the others, are going elsewhere to visit a historic automobile collection. We buy an English-language guidebook to the museum’s collection at the bookstore, and then walk across and alongside the Isar, and back over to the Isartor for a photograph, before taking the tram back to the hotel.
In the evening, we’re not terribly hungry, so we go to a local pizza parlor for dinner.
The initial development and first great expansion of railways in Bavaria took place before the kingdom was incorporated into the unified Germany in 1871, and thus was focused mainly on the historic trade and travel routes of the kingdom itself (routes radiating from Munich and following the historic trading routes south across the Alps, east into (greater) Austria, and west into Switzerland, as well as to the other then-independent German states to the west and north of Bavaria).
The unification of Germany led naturally to greater emphasis on the routes west and north into Germany in the years after 1871, but the development of trade between Germany and the also-unified Italy also led to development of the rail lines crossing the Alps to and through Austria (the Tyrol) and through Switzerland. Lines in the mountains were electrified, replacing steam traction, in the early part of the 20th-century. The aftermath of WWI in Bavaria was notable mostly for the appearance of a new country (Czechoslovakia) on its northeast border, where Austrian provinces had previously been.
After WWII, Bavaria was solidly in West Germany, with the iron curtain impacting only a small portion of its northern border with East Germany (and, of course, the Czech border to the northeast). The major impact on the railways was in the diversion of the erstwhile northward Berlin traffic in a northwesterly direction towards Bonn, and a reduction in the flows between Munich and Prague. These showed themselves mainly in the development of new traffic patterns, but not in any major way in infrastructure developments and changes within Bavaria.
(The locations and routes of the new high-speed lines further north, built starting in the 1980s, were, of course, impacted by the division between the two portions of Germany, initially designed to serve the traffic flows of West Germany alone, but by the time such lines were extended into Bavaria, Germany had re-unified. Due to the locations of these lines, today’s revivified traffic between Berlin and Munich uses the high-speed lines through the former West Germany as far north as it is reasonable to do so, rather than the historic lines northeastward from Nuremberg.)
Although German Railways were not the focus of either of our 2005 trips, we did start and end both the Austrian trip and the Eastern Europe trip in Germany. We did spend at least half an hour, and as much as an hour, over these two trips, watching passenger traffic from the end of station platforms at Munich Hauptbahnhof, Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, and Berlin Ostbahnhof, observing a traffic level of 40-60 trains an hour at all three stations, all of which have an intensive S-Bahn service. However, we saw almost no freight traffic, except from passenger trains passing yards. Some of the trains heading due west from Munich are diesel-powered, while almost all the rest of the lines we see and use in Germany are electrified at 15kV, 16⅔ Hz.
A complete survey of German Railways will have to wait another time and place.
Today, we leave Munich and head for Innsbruck by the scenic route over the Bavarian Alps via Garmisch Partenkirchen, taking a diversion to the top of the Zugspitze—highest mountain in Germany—on the way. (The route taken by express trains traveling from Munich or beyond to Innsbruck and beyond cuts through the mountains using the Inn River Valley between Rosenheim and Wörgl, running east from Munich to Rosenheim and later west up the Inn from Wörgl to Innsbruck in the process. This longer route is so much faster than the scenic route that the elapsed time for the journey is much shorter.)
After breakfast, we check out of the hotel, while our luggage is loaded onto a van for transportation to Innsbruck. We walk over to the Hbf, and to one of the platforms in the far ‘station’ from which trains on this route depart (as do those for Memmingen). Since there are Siemens rental locomotives visible from the platform, and both BOB and Alex trains in the platforms, Werner explains about these private companies running trains in the area, and the routes on which they are authorized to run.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-9-05 |
DB (RB 5413) |
0832 |
Munich-Garmisch |
DB single-level |
DB 111065-2 |
|
5-9-05 |
Zugspitzbahn |
1015 |
Garmisch-Grainau |
ZB friction brake |
Elec. Car |
|
5-9-05 |
Zugspitzbahn |
|
To the workshops |
ZB rack brake |
Elec. Car |
|
5-9-05 |
Zugspitzbahn |
|
From the workshops |
ZB rack brake |
Elec. Car |
|
5-9-05 |
Zugspitzbahn |
1135 |
Grainau - Zugspitze |
ZB rack brake |
Elec. Car |
|
5-9-05 |
|
1230 |
Zugspitze-Summit |
Aerial tramway |
N/A |
|
5-9-05 |
|
1430 |
Summit-Eibsee |
Aerial tramway |
N/A |
|
5-9-05 |
Zugspitzbahn |
1522 |
Eibsee-Grainau |
ZB rack brake |
Elec. Car |
|
5-9-05 |
Zugspitzbahn |
1536 |
Grainau - Garmisch |
ZB friction brake |
Elec. Car |
|
5-9-05 |
DB/ÖBB (RB5427) |
1604 |
Garmisch-Innsbruck |
DB single-level |
111029-5 |
The line to Garmisch-Partenkirchen turns south at the complex junction immediately west of Munich-Pasing. The S-bahn line on the west side of the main line has stations at Westkreuz, Lochham, Gräfelfing, Planegg, Stockdorf and Gauting before the S-bahn tracks merge with the main line tracks. The line then passes through Mühlthal before reaching the west shore of the Starnberger See at Starnberg, and then passing through Possenhofen and Fekdafubg as it runs along the west shore of the lake. North of Tutzing, and across the lake, the palace where Ludwig II was staying when he drowned in the lake is visible. Tutzing station has two platforms serving three tracks with the station buildings on the east side. There is a branch line heading southeast from here, to Kochel, which continues along the lake while the main line turns west throgh the closed station at Diemendorf and then southwest through Weilheim, where the line south from Geltendorf trails in and a line west to Peiting departs. The main line turns south through Polling and Huglfing..
Uffing a Staffelsee has two platforms serving three tracks, with the station buildings on the west side. Murnau has two platforms serving three through tracks and a bay on the southeast side, with the station buildings on the east side. A branch line west to Oberammergau departs at Murnau Ort, south of Murnau. The main line passes through a closed station at Hechendorf. There are mountains visible on the east side south of Murnau, which are alongside from Ohlstatdt. Ohlstadt has two platforms serving two tracks, with the station building on the east side. The line then turns south-southwest through Eschenlohe, Oberau, and a closed station at Farchant. Garmisch-Partenkirchen has three platforms serving five tracks, with the station buildings on the east side.
After an on-time arrival at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, we transfer from the main line train to the electric car of the Zugspitzebahn at its station adjacent to the west end of the pedestrian subway under the mainline station. This car takes us part of the way to the Zugspitze, heading west over a segment of the line that is of a low enough grade for the cars to use standard friction brakes, through Kreuzeck-Osterfelderbahn and Hammersbach. Just before the line’s grade stiffens to the point where rack assistance is needed is Grainau, a station at which passengers must change from friction-braked electric cars to rack-assisted electric cars (that have no friction brakes). The railway is buying new stock that will have both friction brakes and rack assistance, to be delivered in 2006, which will eliminate the required change of cars.
Our next car, however, takes us not up the Zugspitze but into the railway’s workshops, where we tour their mechanical facilities, seeing what it takes for complete disassembly, refurbishment, and reassembly of a truck, gears and cogwheels, and traction motors. Trucks have rubber pads tuned to reduce wheel squeals on tight curves. Cars have an illuminated ‘A’ to indicate a complete train when running in multiple. We see the snowplows, including rotary blades over the rails, and snow-blowers. Following this tour, we return to the interchange station at Grainau and board the next regular service to the top of the mountain, up the single-track rack line, with passing places along the way and a maximum gradient of 25%. The line turns south to pass through Eibsee and start the steep part of the climb. The top one-third or so of the total rail-borne journey, above Riffelheim (1,840 meters elevation) is in tunnel, much like that on the Jungfrau in Switzerland. At the uppermost station, Zugspitzplatz, we transfer to an aerial tramway to reach the facilities at the summit, where there is a restaurant at which we have an excellent group lunch. Unfortunately, the views are restricted due to clouds and snow.
One of our number suffers from asthma, induced by a combination of altitude (low oxygen levels) and stress, that causes him to be taken down the mountain by emergency services and miss lunch. Werner coordinates his return to the group in Garmisch, in time for our onward train to Austria. After an excellent lunch, a number of us visit the observation area on the upper deck, where visitors can go outside, but all we can see is snow! We return not by the railway, but by taking a much longer aerial tramway down to Eibsee, from whose base station we have to hike through the woods, on a rising trail, over to the station on the rack railway. I let Werner know of my negative thoughts on this part of the trip! L
The remainder of the return to Garmisch is by the same railway we had used on the way up. At Garmisch, we transfer to an onward main line train to Innsbruck, which climbs up over the pass in the mountains, into Austria, and descends eastward along the south side of the Inn valley, on a line much like that of the Lötschberg railway descending towards Brig in Switzerland. We travel in a remodeled compartment coach.
The line turns east immediately on leaving Garmisch, as the branch line to Reutte in Tirol turns west, and continues east as far as Klais, where it turns south. Klais is at 933 meters elevation, highest station in Germany. Mittenwald, last station in Germany, has two platforms with three through tracks and a bay to the southeast, with station buildings on the east side. Still heading south, the summit of the line is at Scharnitz, first station in Austria, where the line turns southwest. Giessenbach station has a single platform on the west side of this generally single-track line. At Seefeld in Tirol, the line turns south again. After Reith, the line turns east along the north side of the Inn valley, running through many tunnels along the valley side, as well as through the stations at Leithen, Hochzirl, which has station buildings on the north/east side, a long tunnel, Kranebitten, Allerheiligenhöfe, and Innsbruck Hötting, on the valley floor where the line turns south. The views over the countryside to the west of Innsbruck and then (from a lower altitude) of the western portion of Innsbruck itself are quite spectacular.
The line crosses over the Inn, turns east as it joins with the Arlberg line from the west, and enters Innsbruck West station, which has station buildings on the north side, shops and yards on the south side, and yards on the north side, east of the station. The line turns north at the junction with the line coming north from the Brenner Pass and enters Innsbruck Hauptbahnhof, which has four main platforms covered with umbrella sheds and serving seven tracks. There are two east end bays on the north (west) side, where the station buildings are located, and two other bays at the west end on different sides of the station. The platforms are connected by a pedestrian subway accessed at the entry side from a lower-level plaza surrounded by shops, connected by escalators with the ground-level area where the departures and arrivals indicators are located. Directly across from the end of the subway is the underground parking area located beneath the bus and tram station that is directly outside the ground-level entrance to the station, in Südtiroler Platz.
In Innsbruck, our hotel for the next four nights is right across Südtiroler Platz from the Hauptbahnhof, northeast of the entrance, a very convenient location. After that lunch at the Zugspitze, Chris and I are not hungry tonight, so we eat something small from a fast food restaurant right on the square across from the station. This same fast food restaurant will prove to be the cheapest source of quite acceptable coffee for the next few days, but its tea facilities are broken, so it is reduced to supplying Chris with cups of hot water, free of charge, to which she adds the teabags she has brought with us!
Innsbruck is the capital of the remaining Austrian part of the Tyrol, and is surrounded by high mountains. It lies deep in the Inn River Valley, between the northernmost and middle east-west ranges of the Alps, and serves as the tourist center for Alpine skiing, as well as for summer visits to the mountains. The town center lies to the west of the Hauptbahnhof, and the north of the West station, with its other edges being defined by the river Inn to the west and north of the town center. There is an interesting monumental arch in the downtown area, and a famous balcony with a golden roof, but otherwise the architecture is undistinguished. Public transport is provided by a tramway system and by trolleybuses and buses.
Innsbruck’s current tramway system was developed starting in 1905 and eventually extended to six routes within the city, plus the Stubaitalbahn interurban-style (”lokalbahn”) line over the mountain corner to Fulpmes. In 2005, there are two lines remaining within the city (lines 1 and 3), line 6 out to Igls, and the Stubaitalbahn. Their current routings within the city date from 1995, developed as traffic-limiting measures were introduced on city-center streets. The track and tram stop arrangements at the Hauptbahnhof stop for line 3 and “terminal” for the Stubaitalbahn are more recent even than that, with a new umbrella shelter over the revised platform. Earlier precursors of the tramway system (such as the line to Hall in Tirol), built from 1891 onwards, have now disappeared. The cars in use today are all second-hand, having previously been used in cities in Germany.
This morning’s event is a visit to the tramway museum located over at the Stubaitalbahnhof, adjacent to the tramway’s car barn and repair facilities, to which we shall travel on a vintage tramcar. After breakfast, we walk across the street to the tram and bus platforms in the square outside the Hbf to wait for our special tram to arrive. This one actually proves to be of an age that we really would consider ‘vintage’, and it takes us through the center of town, with a couple of stops for photographs, on routes that are stated (correctly) to be segments of lines 3 and 1, but are more correctly the precise route of the Stubitalbahn trams through the town center. On the way to the museum there is a section where the street is under construction, resulting in single-line working for the trams with temporary crossovers laid in the street at each end of the single-line section.
At the museum, we go through the indoor exhibits, buy books and postcards, and then walk back to the old car barn that now houses the rolling stock exhibits. The museum currently owns more tramcars (24) than the tramway does (22) Once done here, we take the vintage tram over to the Bergisel turnaround for line 1 for more photos and then return to the starting point outside the Hbf. Here, Chris and I split from the group to go our own way over the next day and a half, acquiring coffee and hot water and taking them to our hotel room for a break before the afternoon’s excursion.
Reading the book on trains in the Tirol (published in England) that I have brought with me, I realize that the small town of Toblach, to which Gustav Mahler repaired in the summers of the late 1900s to compose his monumental late symphonies (number 6 onwards) is within potential reach for an afternoon excursion from Innsbruck, over the Brenner Pass, rather than needing to be accessed from its east (via Villach) as I had previously thought. At breakfast, I ask Werner about this, and he kindly goes over to the station to find out the times. It turns out we can do this, at the cost of being an hour late for the group dinner in the hotel tonight, so we decide to do it.
The complication is that the Italian State Railways (Toblach is in the South Tyrol, forcibly—and against the will of its majority population—transferred from Austria to Italy in 1919) require seat reservations on the Euro City trains we must use on the south side of the Brenner Pass, so we go over to the station ourselves to make these reservations before the tram tour starts, coincidentally being served by the same young woman who had assisted Werner a few minutes earlier! This means that we will cover the ‘optional’ portions of the tour over the next day and a half in a different order from the main body of the group, although we are by no means the only people to diverge from the group in this manner.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-11-05 |
ÖBB/Trenitalia |
1326 |
Innsbruck-Fortezza |
EuroCity |
1116/405 |
|
5-11-05 |
Trenitalia |
1515 |
Fortezza-Toblach |
Italian push-pull |
464 |
|
5-11-05 |
Trenitalia |
1741 |
Toblach-Fortezza |
Italian push-pull |
464 |
|
5-11-05 |
Trenitalia/ÖBB |
1845 |
Fortezza-Innsbruck |
EuroCity |
405/1116 |
After noon, we head over to the Hbf to take our EuroCity train (formed of Italian EuroCity stock) EC 87, Tiepolo (all Austrian EuroCity trains have names) from Innsbruck south over the Brenner Pass to Fortezza, where we will transfer to an Italian Railways local train east to Toblach and return. The first class car has nine compartments, each with six seats. For reservations, the seats in each car are numbered 1 to 6, and prepended with the compartment number. So, as we will see later, 24 seat reservations are listed as 31-66 and initially appear to cover far more seats than they actually do. It transpires that seating bays in the first class open cars are numbered in the same fashion, which makes their numbering system harder to grasp than for compartments
The line over the Brenner Pass (and through Toblach) was the first all-Austrian line into Innsbruck (without going through another country), built by the Südbahn and opened in 1867. This remained an all-Austrian line until the separation of South Tyrol from Austria in 1919. The line was doubled within a year of opening, The line from Innsbruck to Brennersee was electrified in 1928, and the now-Italian lines in South Tyrol were electrified on a three-phase system in 1929. The last Austrian stretch between Brenersee and Brenner was electrified in 1934. The present-day Italian electrification system was introduced in 1965. There is still, of course, a difference in voltage and frequency of the overhead electrical supply between the Austrian standard of 15 Kv AC (16⅔ Hz) and the current Italian standard of 3000 v DC.
From Innsbruck Hauptbahnhof (originally, Südbahnhof, until 1919), the line heads due south as the Arlberg line curves away west, curves southwest through Berg Isel Tunnel (just south of the Bergisel terminus of tramline 1), and then south again through Sonnenburg Tunnel on the east side of the Brenner valley After the line passes through Ahrenwald Tunnel, the freight cutoff coming across the southeast side of Innsbruck through the Inntal tunnel trails in from the northeast. At Unterberg-Stefansbrücke, the line turns south-southeast and starts to climb up the east valley wall, through Patsch, a couple of tunnels, Matrei and Steinach in Tirol, turns east just before St. Jodok and immediately makes a clockwise horseshoe to the west, through a tunnel, and then turns south again through another tunnel. At Gries, the line turns southeast, and then south again entering Brennersee, which is followed almost immediately by Brenner/Brennero. On this stretch of the line, freight trains are both double-headed and banked (with a locomotive at the rear). There are (or were) “Rolling Road” trains on this stretch of line, of the kind we will later see at Selzthal, running from Germany as far as the Italian Border.
Brenner(o) station has only two platforms with through track adjacent to them, and buildings on the east side, with a signal control tower on the northeast corner, but there are six tracks between the two platforms! There are many tunnels on the Italian side of the pass. The line heads southwest through a tunnel and then turns sharply back to the east-southeast as far as Colle Isarco/Gossensass, where it turns south to Vipito/Sterzing and then southeast through Campo di Trens/Freienfeld, Mules/mauls, , Le Cave/Grasstein and the closed station at Mezzaselva/Mittewald to Fortezza/Franzensteste.
Fortezza station has two platforms with three tracks and station buildings on the east side. There is a yard on the west side of the station. The single-track line to Toblach/Dobbiacco departs to the east some way south of the Fortezza station, passing through a closed station at Aicha, turning north through another one at Mühlbach, and then turning east throhgh Vintl and a closed station at St. Sigmund. There is a freight station on a southeasterly heading at Ehrenburg. The line turns west past a closed station at St. Lorenz, and then north to Bruneck. Above Bruneck, where there is a clockwise (eastbound) semi-circular curve around a mountainside from northerly heading to southerly heading, the line turns east and back and forth across the narrowing valley through Olang-Antholz, Weslberg-Gsies, amd Niederdorf-Prags A church in Niederdorf is particularly prominent along the line. Toblach has two low-level platforms serving two tracks, with the station buildings on the south side.
On the run over the highly-scenic Brenner Pass, we share a compartment with a couple from New Zealand who are traveling from Munich to Verona and beyond. We start out in sunshine, but the pass itself is cloudy. As always on the Brenner Pass, the train changes locomotives at the summit station, Brenner (or, in Italian, Brennero), due to the change in the overhead electrical supply ssytem. (Locomotives that will operate on both standards are easily available, and used elsewhere in Europe, but the Italian Railways won’t use them or let them be used.) This process takes 12 minutes on the southbound train, and eighteen on the northbound run.
As we descend on the south ramp of the Brenner Pass, rain begins to fall and is falling steadily by the time we detrain in Fortezza. The train to Toblach connects into and out of expresses both ways on the main line, so is a more than twenty-minute wait for the southbound connection (almost immediate for the northbound, with both trains in the platform at once for a cross-platform connection). The line to Toblach runs through an east-west valley in the Dolomite Mountains, which here form the southernmost of the three east-west ranges of the Alps. (The northernmost at this longitude is the Bavarian Alps, and the middle one the range crossed by the Brenner Pass.) There are towns and industrial facilities in the lower reaches of the valley, giving way to mountain towns and resorts in the upper reaches. Most of the passengers on our train are schoolchildren returning home after completion of their schoolday.
Unfortunately, Toblach is closed during the first two weeks of May (between ski season and summer season), and so not only are there no cafes open (and thus no toilet facilities—the station is in private hands and has no facilities), there is also no way for us to get a taxi to take us up to the lakeside where Mahler’s composing hut is, itself, decomposing. However, we can see up into that magnificent valley, and the experience of the Dolomites themselves is something we have enjoyed greatly.
Although the weather was dry (but cloudy) at Toblach, it is again raining and windy at Fortezza as we wait for our northbound EC express. We’re into Innsbruck on time, and reach the side dining room as the remainder of the group is eating dessert. Those at our table (including Werner) want to hear what we have been doing, so we have company as we eat our meal. Paul Falon, in fact, is inspired to take his own optional trip, all the way to the Arosa Line behind Chur in Switzerland (where he will be accompanied by Ken Steele), when he hears what we have done and what we will be doing different on Wednesday. Dessert turns out to be fruit salad in an orange sauce, so Chris can’t eat it, and I choose not to.
The rest of the group had done the Stubaitalbahn on Tuesday afternoon, when we went to Toblach, so we opt to do that this morning before heading for our variant trip over the Arlberg this afternoon. I had carefully had Werner show me how to purchase tickets for the run to Fulpmes before we separated from the group on Tuesday morning.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-11-05 |
Stubaitalbahn |
0845 |
Innsbruck-Fulpmes |
Electric tramcar |
N/A |
|
5-11-05 |
Stubaitalbahn |
1014 |
Fulpmes-Innsbruck |
Electric tramcar |
N/A |
After breakfast, we walk across to the tram stop as the rest of the group is gathering for their morning ride over the Arlberg to Feldkirch (after which they will return and then go to Brenner in the afternoon). I purchase the required tickets for the Stubaitalbahn, and watch its approach on the “next service” indicators. We are confounded, momentarily, when the tram service disappears because the bus behind it has come and departed first, but then the Stubaitalbahn tramcar appears and we board. At the Stubaitalbahnhof, we have to transfer from this car to another that is waiting there.
The line operates as would an Interurban, climbing out of Innsbruck to the southwest, up and over the shoulder of the mountain to the west of the cleft where the Brenner Pass line runs, through a number of lovely villages, and then down the north side of an east-west valley to its terminus above the village of Fulpmes. In the early stages of the run are some great overhead views of Innsbruck, including a panorama of the Innsbruck Westbahnhof and its associated freight yards. Looking down on the valley where the Brenner Pass line runs, we see many of the autobahn bridges that we had seen from below the day before. For more than half of the outbound run, we are the only passengers on the car, on a bright sunny day with glorious vistas. This is in contrast to at least some group members the afternoon before, who had been up in the clouds on a tramcar that was so full they had to stand and could not see out of the windows! We arrive at Fulpmes, elevation 936.25 meters (not the summit), at 09:49. The station is up above the village it serves, even though it is down a couple of s-curves from the line’s course along the hillside.
Returning the same way, with a few more people in the car, we go all the way through to the Hbf on the same car, arriving at 11:18. As on the previous day, we get coffee and “tea” and take them to our room for a few minutes of ‘down time’ before heading to the station for our Arlberg trip.
We have chosen this trip variant to connect up with the trackage we had ridden the previous year on Switzerland. The timings are such that a direct return from Buchs is not really feasible (four minute connection into a train going back the same way, or a four hour wait for the next express train on that route), but the optimum trip still would require a four minute connection into a northbound train at Buchs, which in the event we don’t make. This would have connected, after the DMU link, with an Intercity back from Bregenz that would have returned us to Innsbruck some to hours earlier than we actually get there.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-11-05 |
ÖBB (EC 160) |
1239 |
Innsbruck-Buchs |
ÖBB EuroCity |
1116 |
|
5-11-05 |
SBB |
1601 |
Buchs-St. Margarethen |
SBB single-level |
SBB 420 |
|
5-11-05 |
ÖBB |
1638 |
St. Margarethen-Bregenz |
4024 EMU |
N/A |
|
5-11-05 |
ÖBB |
1710 |
Bregenz-Feldkirch |
ÖBB bi-level |
?? |
|
5-11-05 |
ÖBB (EC 163) |
1920 |
Feldkirch-Innsbruck |
ÖBB EuroCity |
1116125-4 |
A little after noon, we walk over to the station and position ourselves on the correct platform to wait for our Austrian EuroCity train to appear. This is EC 160, the Maria Theresia, a service from Vienna to Zurich, coming through Salzburg and the Rosenheim east-to-south curve. When it arrives, we climb into first class and take the first window no-smoking seats we see—in a spaciously equipped compartment with only two seats per side. We notice that this says “Business Class”, but are unaware of the significance. When the ticket collector comes around, she tells us that these seats require a 16 Euro supplement, but that there are plenty of empty seats in the SBB Panoramic car just one car further back in the train. So, we move back to a pair of facing seats on the “1” side of the 2+1 seating in that car.
The Arlberg line was opened in 1884. The line was electrified throughout by 1929, but doubling has taken place only recently, beginning in 1969 and still ongoing in 2005.
The line turns west at the south end of Innsbruck Hauptbahnhof, as the Brenner line continues straight ahead, and passes through Innsbruck Westbahnhof, continuing west along the south side of the river as the Garmisch line turns away north. The line heads up the middle of the Inn River valley, through Völs, Kematen in Tirol, Zirl, Inzing, Hatting, Flaurling, Telfs-Faffenhofen, where it turns west-southwest, Rietz, Stams, Mötz, Silz and Hamming to Ötztal Ötztal station has two platforms with four tracks and the station buildings to the south. At Roppen, the line turns west. Imst-Putztal has three tracks on two platforms, with the station buildings to the north. At Imsterberg, the line turns southeast through Schönwies and Zams. Landeck, where the Inn valley turns away to the south, has three tracks on two platforms, with the station buildings to the north. The line turns west again and starts to climb steeply, with maximum gradients of 2.6%, through Landeck-Perfuchs, Pians, a tunnel, Strengen, Flirsch, Schwann, Pettneu and St. Jakob.
St. Anton im Arlberg has two platforms with four tracks, wedged in between tunnels at either end of the platforms. The 10,300 m, long Arlberg Tunnel has two tracks. Langen im Arlberg has one island platform with two tracks, again in between tunnels. The line runs along the northeast side of the Kloster valley, high above the valley floor, descending at maximum grades of over 3% through Klösterle, a tunnel, Wald am Arlberg, Dalaas, another tunnel, Hintergasse, Braz, and Bings. Approaching Bludenz, a branch line from Schruns, operated by a private railway, trails in from the southeast. Bludenz has three platforms with five tracks, and is the end of the local service from Bregenz. The line is now running northwest along the valley floor, through Nüziders, Kudesch, Nenzing, Schlins and Frastanz before turning sharply northeast into Feldkirch. Feldkirch has two platforms serving three tracks, with the station buildings on the southwest side, but the area between the platforms is under construction so its final layout is not clear. At the northeast end of Feldkirch, the line to Bregenz continues straight ahead, while the line to Buchs turns west through Altenstatdt and then southwest through Gisingen and Tsis, into Liechtenstein at Schaanwald, through Wendeln and Schaan-Vaduz, then turning west across the Rhine into Switzerland and north into the station at Buchs.
From the line west along the Inn Valley, we can see (before changing seats on this train) the line down from Garmisch Partenkirchen that we had traveled two days earlier. At Landeck, there is a krokodil of class 1363 (?) in the locomotive depot. Some of the line to the Arlberg tunnel is only single track, but there is much track work going on that seems to be pointed towards double-tracking the line. However, there are single-track spots that the timetable considers to be double-track (one track is out of service) and the resulting waits for opposing trains make us seven minutes late before reaching the Arlberg tunnel. (Other evidence of double-tracking is that some relatively high-speed double-track segments have apparently new double-track tunnels with long-radius arc roofs rather than the more typical tunnel bore profile. We shall see these again on the high-speed segments (some of them dating from 1995, some newly abuilding) of the Westbahn main line between Vienna and Linz.) We even see track equipment inside one of the tunnels!
At Langen im Arlberg, the station just west ot the Arlberg tunnel’s west portal, we meet an eastbound train that is the one our group members are taking back to Innsbruck from Feldkirch, and looking at that train’s First Class car, we see them, and they see us. In fact, they later describe us as giving them the ‘royal wave’ from the panoramic windows of our car. Beyond Feldkirch, a station which we observe is under complete reconstruction, our train takes the line curving away westward, passing through Liechtenstein (without stopping) and across the Swiss border at the Rhine to its stop in the Swiss station at Buchs.
At Buchs, the line from Feldkirch curves northward into the station, requiring a reversal of the train and a replacement of locomotives before proceeding onward to Zurich. Buchs station is also under reconstruction, so it seems unlikely that we would have caught the supposedly-connecting train on the other side of the station, passing through the construction zone and a temporary passenger subway, even if our arriving train had been on time. During our hour’s wait at Buchs, I photograph, from the sunny side, the stuffed-and-mounted steam locomotive that we had seen from the St. Gallen train, and captured from the dark side, a year earlier.
Buchs station has three platforms and five tracks, with the station buildings on the west side. Buchs is also under construction, so the final layout is unknown. The line heads north through Haag-Gams and then northeast, along the west bank of the Rhine, through Salez-Gennwald, Rüthi, and Oberriet, where it turns north, to Altstetten, where it turns northeast again. Altstetten has two tracks between two platforms, with the station buildings to the west. The line passes through Rebstein-Marbach and Heerbrugg, which also has two platforms and station buildings to the west, but the second track is not between the platforms! The line then heads north-northeast through Au, turning west-northwest as the line from Bregenz trails in at the east end of St. Margarethen, which has two platforms and three tracks, with a footbridge connecting the platforms and station buildings to the south.
The train onward to St. Margarethen is a Rheinthal Express that has two first class cars at opposite ends of the train. Because we’re sitting in the sun next to the steamer at the south end of the station, we board the rearmost of these, while (as it turns out) Paul Fallon and Ken Steele are detraining from the one at the front of the train to make a connection via secondary services over to Feldkirch in time to catch the train from Bregenz that we should have caught if we had made the hour-earlier onward connection here! The ticket collector on this Swiss train has been to Los Angeles on vacation more than a dozen times, she tells us. At St. Margarethen, where we arrive at 1627, a two-car Austrian diesel multiple-unit (DMU) is waiting with its hourly service back across the Rhine to Bregenz, an Austrian city on the south end of Lake Constance, departing at 1638.
The line diverges from the SBB line to Buchs at the east end of St. Margarethen station, and continues eastward across the Rhine on a through girder bridge. The stations along this line all have single platforms to one side of the line or the other, with station buildings beyond the platform in each case. The line passes through Lustenau-Markt, turns northeast through Lustenau and east at Hard-Fussach. At a wye junction south of Riedenburg, the line from Feldkirch comes in from the south, the joined lines continue north, and Riedenburg station has an island platform above street level. After a curve to the east, Bregenz station has three platforms with umbrella roofs, serving five through tracks, with station buildings to the east/south.
Arriving in Bregenz at 1701, we prove to have missed the express train to Innsbruck by just fifteen minutes, and the next one is not due for another four hours. So, we take the 1710 local service heading for Feldkirch and Bodenz, along the Arlberg line, with a view to catching the next eastward express from Buchs (that would have been the four-hour turnaround from our westward train).
This route returns the way we have just come as far as the junction south of Riedenburg station, where the line continues south and crosses over a Rhine tributary on a through girder bridge. Lauterach station has an island platform. The line passes through Wolfurt and Schwarzach in Vorarlberg, turns southwest and passes through Haselstauden to Dornbirn. The stations at Dornbirn, Hohenems, Götzis and Rosbaud all have two platforms serving three tracks, with station buildings to the east. At Dornbirn-Schoren, the line turns south-southwest to Hatlerdorf and then southwest again through Hohenems, and Altach to Götzis, where it again turns south through Klaus in Vorarlberg, Sulz-Röthis, and Rankweil before again turning southwest at Feldkirch-Amberg to reach the junction with the line from Buchs and enter Feldkirch station.
This local train is formed of double-deck Austrian commuter stock, appropriate since it is the one outbound commuter train of the day from Bregenz, and we sit upstairs. We detrain at Feldkirch at 1745, in spite of the reconstruction, to maximize our time on the express train.
Because of the timing, we eat dinner in the restaurant in the Feldkirch station, where the next table is occupied by two non-native English-speakers conversing in English about the mechanical characteristics of light rail or subway systems, before returning to the platform for our onward EuroCity train at 1920. This turns out to be the same trainset, now forming EC 163, the Kaiserin Elizabeth,, with the same ticket collector who remembers us, as our westbound train earlier in the day. We again, naturally, take seats in the Panoramic car.
Between Bodenz and Langen at the Arlberg tunnel, we see the vintage cars of the Orient Express, parked in a siding on the south side of the line, with passengers in evening dress getting ready for dinner. (Other group members saw this train go through Brenner while making their turnaround there, and Paul and Ken saw it further east along the Arlberg line.) At Langen, there are MoW cars in the sidings to the south, and a westbound freight headed by an 1044 and an 1116 with several bi-level cars carrying new automobiles.
Darkness has almost completely fallen by the time we get back to Innsbruck, at 2125, and we go directly to bed after crossing back over the square to the hotel.
Today, we head a few miles down the Inn valley to Jenbach, where two separate narrow-gauge lines have steam-operated passenger services that we will ride during the course of the day. The Zillertalbahn operates a daily steam-operated service using vintage passenger cars, in addition to its regular diesel-powered service with more modern cars, while the Achenseebahn operates a regular steam-powered rack-assisted service to Achensee.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-12-05 |
ÖBB (5108) |
0843 |
Innsbruck-Jenbach |
ÖBB “City Shuttle” |
1044752-2 |
|
5-12-05 |
Zillertalbahn |
1047 |
Jenbach-Mayrhofen |
Vintage four-wheel |
Steam |
|
5-12-05 |
Zillertalbahn |
1248 |
Mayrhofen-Jenbach |
Vintage four-wheel |
Steam |
|
5-12-05 |
Achenseebahn |
1500 |
Jenbach-Achensee |
Vintage four-wheel |
Steam-rack |
|
5-12-05 |
Achenseebahn |
1600 |
Achensee-Jenbach |
Vintage four-wheel |
Steam-rack |
|
5-12-05 |
ÖBB |
1659 |
Jenbach-Innsbruck |
ÖBB Inter-city |
1116 |
The railway down the Inn valley was the original, Nordtiroler Bahn line into Innsbruck, opened in 1858 as far as Kufstein, on the German border, and providing service to Salzburg and Vienna via the connecting Imperial Bavarian Railways line through Rosenheim. The line was doubled between 1888 and 1891, and electrified between 1925 and 1927.
The line heads north out of Innsbruck-Hauptbahnhof, on a viaduct above street level, but soon makes a large turn eastward, following the course of the River Inn, and crossing it in the process. Rum has two side platforms. Hall in Tirol has two platforms with three tracks and station buildings on the north side. East of the station, the freight bypass line, coming across the southeast side of Innsbruck in tunnel, emerges from that tunnel and joins with the passenger line at a large freight yard serving the Innsbruck area. There are construction works alongside the line on one side or the other, east of the Innsbruck freight bypass, as part of building a new high-speed line to carry the Brenner Pass traffic between Germany and Italy. From Wolders-Baumkirchen to Jenbach, the Inn River is on the south side of the line the whole way.
Wolders-Baumkirchen, on a short stretch heading northeast, has two side platforms. Fritzens-Wattens, back on an easterly heading again has two platforms serving three tracks, with the station buildings to the south. The line passes through Terfens-Weer. Pill-Vomberbach, where the line turns northeast, has two side platforms. Schwaz has two platforms serving three tracks with the station buildings to the south. Stans bei Schwaz has two side platforms, after which the line turns east entering Jenbach.. Jenbach has three platforms serving five tracks, with the station buildings on the north side. A pedestrian subway connects the platforms. The Zillertalbahn station is on the south side of the main station, and the Achenseebahn station is on the north side, east of the station buildings.
The mainline service we take down the valley is a second-class only “CityShuttle” stopping train that gets us to Jenbach more than an hour before the Zillertalbahn steam service is to depart. Since the following InterCity service, with a First Class car, arrives here some forty minutes before that train departs, this seems odd, but Werner makes comments about ‘photographers wanting more time for photos’. However, the steam locomotive doesn’t move into photographable position until half an hour before departure (it has been back in the servicing facilities, getting coaled and watered), so this still doesn’t compute, at least to me. During the wait, we talk to some people who are here on a similar group tour from England, and will have the next car to ours.
Werner puts a laminated ‘IRT Austria’ placard in the window of our reserved car, Udepas, to identify it, but when Hamp opens that window the placard falls down inside the mechanism, and later on we find we can’t close that window because of an obstruction! There are just enough seats in this car (facing pairs around tables) that we can have only one person per seat, with everyone having a window seat at an openable window.
The Zillertalbahn is 760 mm gauge., and was opened from 1900 to 1902. The line leaves the station heading eastward, along the south side of the main line, and turns south, crossing the River Inn, when it reaches the mouth of the Zillertal itself. All the stations on this single-track line are single platforms. The line passes through Rotholz while still headed east, Strass im Zillertal while making the turn, and then Shlitters, Gagering, Fügen-Hart, Kapfing, Uderns, Ried im Zillertal, Kaltenbach-Stumm, Aschau im Zillertal, Erlach im Zillertal, Zell am Ziller, Ramsberg-Hippach, and Bühel before reaching the end of the line at Mayrhofen.
As the train departs, and after everyone has the needed photos of the steam locomotive, we see some interesting features of the regular operation of this narrow gauge line. There are lumber industries up the valley (Zillertal) that receive regular carloads of logs from and ship regular carloads of furniture to, locations on the standard gauge lines. These are handled by the use of narrow-gauge ‘transporter wagons’ that can each carry a standard-gauge freight car on top of it, along the narrow-gauge segment of the journey. We see the locations where standard-gauge cars can be pushed onto, or pulled off, the narrow-gauge transporter wagons, and we see the lumber mills themselves where these cars are unloaded and/or loaded.
At Strass im Zillertal there is a huge mudslide on the south side of the line, still being cleared up. We wait here for a diesel-hauled northbound train. Cattle in the fields have been separated—the calves have been segregated to prepare them to become veal. Between Fügen-Hart and Uderns, both ways, the train goes very slowly at a location where a new bridge is being built. At Uderns we wait for another opposing train.
At Fügen-Hart, some way up the valley, a large number of people had boarded some of the other cars on the train. When they get off at the head of the valley, the vast majority of them head for the regular public bus service that crosses over the mountains to the end of another narrow-gauge line east of here. There are so many people climbing on the public bus service, and paying individually with notes requiring change, that the bus driver is overwhelmed and tries to refuse boarding for that many people.
After more than an hour at the upper end of the valley, in beautiful mountain scenery on a sunny day, and during which the steam locomotive runs around the train and a regular service train arrives and departs, we reboard our car and the steam train returns down the valley to Jenbach. At Zell am Ziller, we wait for a southbound opposing train. At Fügen-Hart, we meet another southbound opposing train. While we’re doing this, another northbound train passes us in a three-way meet.
Back at Jenbach, seven minutes late, we cross under the mainline station to go from the Zillertalbahn station on the south side to the Achenseebahn station on the northeast side. After some time to get refreshments in the café, a steam-powered rack train arrives from Achensee, its locomotive cuts off and goes for servicing at the coaling facility just up the line, and then returns to the train for our departure.
The Achenseebahn is a meter gauge rack railway, opened in 1889. It departs eastward from Jenbach, and then turns northward to climb the mountainside. Immediately east of the station, the line’s locomotive sheds and coaling facilities are on the north side of the line. The rack starts at the east end of the sheds. The line passes through Burgeck, Eben, and Maurach on the way north to Achensee. There is a 7% grade as soon as the line turns north, later falling to 4%. The steepest part of the climb is at 15% or 16%, through thickly wooded hillsides with slopes steeper than the track. The summit of the line occurs before reaching Maurach. The station at Achensee-Seespitz is right on the lakeshore (east of the line), with a pier for lake boats right there.
Some members of our group opt to sit right up front, with no part of the train ahead of them as the locomotive pushes the cars up the steep slope ahead of us. After passing through great scenery up this grade, the line reaches a summit before descending a short way to the shore of the lake at Achensee, and here the locomotive runs around to be on the down side as the line descends to the terminal point. Interestingly, the locomotive runs around again in Achensee, and hauls the train up that same short slope before being (naturally) on the down side all the way down from the summit to Jenbach.
From Jenbach, we take an InterCity train back to Innsbruck. The First Class car on this train is loaded with a group tour from the UK, with everyone carrying their own luggage off the train at Jenbach. (Austrian trains require the use of internal steps to get up and down from the train floor, even where the station platforms are apparently high-level.) This takes quite a few minutes, and one of those climbing off swings his suitcase (accidentally, I’m sure) into my leg as he goes by, leaving my shin quite sore for a day or two. Werner takes the opportunity to give a plug for IRT’s use of a van to transport luggage from one hotel to the next. (Paul and Ken have yet to go to Brenner, so they stay on this Italy-bound train to go up there when the rest of us get off in Innsbruck.)
Back in Innsbruck, Chris and I walk through the old town, looking for a place to have dinner, and find the Italian Restaurant (‘Al Dente’) where Hamp and Sue had eaten on Monday evening. After we’re seated, Bob Miller and Dave Wiley also come into this restaurant and sit at a table across from us. We have an interesting conversation about previous tours and previous tour guides, with one especially known to all of us in a less than positive light.
At the time railway development started in Europe, The Habsburg Empire was vastly greater in size than today's Austria, stretching from the province of Lombardy in northern Italy (including Milan) to the province of Galicia in what is now southern Poland (including Krakow), and from the province of Bohemia in the northwest to the province of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the southeast. The western extremities of "Austria" extended to the Tyrolean Alps and the border with Switzerland, as now, but also included the South Tyrol (today's Alto Adige in Italy). The eastern extremities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire extended all the way to the encircling Carpathians and beyond, including much land that is now in Romania as well as some that is now in Ukraine. The empire also included Moravia, Slovakia, Ruthenia, Transylvania, Slovenia and Croatia within its borders, as well as Istria, the lands bordering on the Adriatic around Trieste that are now part of Italy. (This was why Austria did, indeed, have a navy prior to WWI.) The contiguous empire had once been even larger, the province of Silesia having been lost to Prussia only in the 18th century.
Although the Italian and German unification processes reduced the empire's size somewhat (Lombardy becoming part of Italy, for example, with minor changes on the northwestern borders), the main portion of the empire remained intact, although with administrative changes resulting in many of the eastern provinces (Hungary, Transylvania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Istria, Slovakia, and Ruthenia, but not Galicia) being governed from Budapest after 1863, until its final collapse towards the end of WWI. In the treaties developed following WWI, much of the empire was reformed as new nations, or as parts of newly-reformed nations (Galicia in Poland; Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia in Czechoslovakia; Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in Yugoslavia; Transylvania to Romania; South Tyrol and Istria to Italy), and Austria itself was reduced to the rump we know today plus the Burgenland region transferred from Hungary.
From 1938 to 1945, Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany (while some former Habsburg territories once governed from Budapest were ruled by Hungary from 1940 or 1941), and was later partitioned among the victors of WWII until the peace treaty in 1953. In the aftermath of WWII, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania all became Soviet satellites (with the far eastern part of Czechoslovakia and a whole swathe of Poland transferred to the Soviet Republics of Ukraine and Belarus, respectively), while Yugoslavia was a communist country not part of the Soviet bloc. The collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 freed these countries from communism, but the resulting resurgence of nationalism subsequently broke up Czechoslovakia (split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and destroyed Yugoslavia (which split back up into its constituent parts of Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and "Macedonia", some of which were never part of the Habsburg Empire since they were still in the Ottoman Empire until its fall in WWI).
Naturally, these sets of cataclysmic changes had vastly disruptive impacts on the routes and operations of the railways of the areas involved.
Austria in the early years of the 21st-century is the same size as it was before the 1938 anschluss, and is a democratic state within the European union and the Euro zone.
After breakfast this morning, we check out of the hotel and cross over to the station to take a train east. We’re going to Salzburg, not by the fastest route (that goes through Germany along the Inn River and turns east at the Rosenheim curve) but by the far more scenic all-Austrian route.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-13-05 |
ÖBB (SPR 1507) |
0925 |
Innsbruck to Swarzach-St. Veit |
ÖBB single-level |
1116049-6 |
|
5-13-05 |
ÖBB (EC 114) |
1152 |
Swarzach-St. Veit to Salzburg |
EuroCity |
1116 |
As far as Jenbach, the route is the same as on Thursday. From Jenbach to Wörgl, the line was also part of the original Nordtiroler Bahn, heading for Germany. The present-day all-Austrian line between Wörgl and Salzburg was opened throughout in 1875, and became part of Imperial Austrian railways in 1882. This line was doubled between 1912 and 1915, and electrified between 1928 and 1929.
East from Jenbach, the line turns north at Münster-Wiseng, and then northeast before Brixlegg, passing through Rattenberg-Kramsach and Kündl to The junction between the original line north to Kufstein and the line southeast towards Saalfelden at Wörgl. Wörgl has four platforms serving seven tracks, with the station buildings on the south side. The line heads east through Söll-Leukental and then southeast through Hopfgarten and Hopfgarten Berglift. A counter-clockwise horseshoe leading back to the north-northwest precedes (i.e. is west of) Windau, where the line turns east. to Westendorf, Brixenim Thale, Kirchberg in Tirol, which has two side platforms, and Schwarzee. The line turns southeast to Kitzbühel Hahnenkamm and then executes a counter-clockwise horseshoe to return north-northwest.
Kitzbühel has two platforms serving four tracks, with station buildings on the north side. The line heads north through Wisenschang-Oberndorf, and then slowly curves east. St. Johann in Tirol has two platforms serving two tracks, with station buildings to the north, beside construction of new platforms and tracks. The line curves southeast to pass through Grieswirt. Fieberbrunn has two platforms, two tracks, and station buildings to the south. The line curves back and forth across the valley., heading generally southeast through Pfaffenschwendt and turning east to Hochfilzen, which has two platforms serving three tracks and station buildings to the south and rail-served industry on the north side.
Heading east-southeast, across the summit of the line and out of the Tyrol, the line descends through Berg-Griessen, Mütten, Ledgang, and Ledgang-Steinberge, and then makes a big curve south to Saalfelden, where the motive power depot for this line is located. Continuing south, the line passes through Gerling im Pinzgau and Maishofen-Saalback, and them running along the west shore of the Zeller See. Zell am See has three platforms serving four tracks (middle island), with the station buildings on the “south” side. The narrow gauge line to Krimml has facilities on the west side of line, south of the station. The line then makes a big curve to the east. Bruck-Fusch has two side platforms and station buildings to the north. The section of the line eastward has been rebuilt following a flood in 2003.
The line continues east through Gries im Pinzgau. Taxenbach-Rauris has four tracks with low-level platforms between all tracks and station buildings to the north. East of here, the second track is separated for a while. The line crosses back and forth across the Salzach in a narrow valley, with adjacent road bridges well above the rail bridges, passing through Kitzlochklamm and Eschenau. Lend has three tracks with low-level platforms and station buildings to the south and an industry served by hopper cars to the north. East of here there are tracks at different levels along the south side of the river, before the Tauern line appears above on the hillside to the south/east.
Our train this morning is a connection off a train from Italy to Vienna. East of Jenbach (which we reach much faster than the day before), the line follows the Inn downriver as far as Wörgl, where the main line turns north into Germany, after which our route turns away eastward climbing up a side valley into highly-scenic mountainous country. World-famous ski resorts (such as Kitzbühel) lie along this line near its summit, after which the general direction turns southward as the line starts to descend. Between Hochfilzen and Saalfelden, we wait at a station that our train does not serve for an opposing train to pass. At Zell am See, we see the east end of that second narrow-gauge line to the west end of which (at Krimml) all those bus passengers the day before were headed from the upper end of the Zillertal. Turning east again, we continue the descent into Swarzach-St. Veit, in the last stages of which we can see the Tauern line descending the southeast hillside above us.
Now in the upper reaches of the Salzach River Valley, we change trains at Swarzach-St. Veit. Our incoming train is several minutes late arriving for a tight connection, but Werner has ‘phoned ahead to ensure the connecting train will wait for us. The cross-platform connection has us moving from a first-class car at the head of the incoming train to a first-class car at the rear of the departing train. To save connection time, we board the new train near its head end and walk back through the restaurant car (where several people decide to eat) to the first class cars in the rear.
The route between Swarzach-St. Veit and Salzburg is described below (Saturday afternoon)
In Salzburg, there is a special bus waiting outside the Hauptbahnhof (in another Südtiroler Platz outside a main station) to take us the couple of miles through the center of the city and across the river into the old town, to our hotel. Here, we have time to settle into our rooms before heading out for this afternoon’s excursion.
Prior to 1803, Salzburg was the capital of an independent principality, ruled by its Prince-Archbishop. It has been part of Austria since 1816. Today, the old town area of Salzburg on the left bank of the Salzach below the fortress is one of the richest historic areas of any city in Europe. With the multiple baroque churches, the fortress above on the scenic Monchsberg, the historic streets below alongside the river, and both Mozart’s birthplace and the house in which he spent his childhood years all in one compact area, this city has been one of my favorite places since I first visited it (to attend the Salzburg Festival) in 1966.
At the old town, the Salzach runs from west-northwest to east-southeast, and the old city is thus on the south side of the river. The Monchsberg is to the southwest, and its extension the Festungsberg is due south. The four principal churches in the old town area are all directly at the foot of the Festungsberg. The architectural ambience and unity of the old town are owed directly to the appointment, in 1705, of Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach as court architect. With the exception of a few existing buildings (the major churches) and a very few newer ones (most notably the Festspielhaus along the foot of the Monchsberg, behind the University Church, the style of the old town and many of its buildings themselves date from that era.
The cathedral, in its present form, dates from almost a century earlier than its current surroundings, replacing an earlier Romanesque church on the same site, but with a slightly different orientation. It was designed by Santino Solari, and constructed between 1614 and 1628. The towers were extended between 1654 and 1658. The cathedral is 100 meters long, the transept is 68 meters across, and the nave is 45 meters wide. There are side chapels along both sides of the nave. Painters included Antonio Mascagni, Ignazio Solari, and Francesco di Siena. Sculptors and stuccoists included Konrad Asper, Hans Waldburger, Hans Pernegger and Joseph Bassarino. Fischer von Erlach designed some of the furniture. The cathedral was badly damaged in an air raid in 1944, including the complete collapse of the dome. Restoration took place from 1955 to 1961, including new paintings in the cupola and transept by Arthur Süs and Hans Fischer. The present organ was built in 1987/88 by Swiss firm Metzler. Two bells are from 1628, the other five from 1961.
St. Peter’s Abbey is the most recent church of a Benedictine monastery dating to 696. The church was given its present form between 1760 and 1762, although parts of the structure date from 1130-1143 with modifications around 1600. The result is a church with Romanesque architecture and Baroque furnishings (paintings, sculpture, plasterwork, etc.). Choir stalls, and the abbot’s throne date from 1924-26 The adjacent cemetery on the south side of the church, hard by the Monchsberg, was given its present form with the lead-covered arcades in the mid 17th-century.
The Franciscan church dates in part from 1223 and in larger part from the mid 15th-century. The west façade is from the early Baroque period, the towers date from the late 15th-century, low tower roof with onion domes from 1670, and the spire from the 19th-century Gothic revival. The high altar was designed and built by Fischer von Erlach in late baroque style.
The University church is the only one of the major churches tht actually dates from the period of Fisher von Erlach’s activity, being completed in 1707. The church is oriented differently from the other three major churches, having a north front rather than a west front, and a main apse facing south. The north façade has two relatively low corner towers, and the main crossing is crowned with a dome. The interior is richly sculpted and stuccoed. A statue of the Virgin Mary, along with the columns flanking it, was designed by Fischer von Eerlach and executed by Diego Francesco Carlone and Paolo d’Allio, stuccoists for the rest of the decoration as well.
Salzburg lies at the crossroads of the southernmost east-west road north of the Alps and the easternmost crossing of the Alps between the Germanic lands to the north and the Italian lands to the south. This gave it a position of great power, but also made it susceptible to threats from those opposed to such power. Construction of the fortress of Hohensalzburg began in 1077, in response to the threat of trouble from German King Henry IV as he returned from his fateful meeting with the Pope at Canossa, south of the Alps, and was completed with the addition of one last bastion in 1681. The first four towers were added in 1465, the rope-worked inclined hoist on the east end was built prior 1504 (and motorized in 1922), and the sumptuous royal palace within the inner ring of walls was built around 1500. In all those years, and continuing through to the end of Salzburg’s independence, in 1816 (occasioned by political requirements, not military defeat), the fortress was never successfully besieged. The greatest benefit the city-state achieved from the fortress was in avoiding any military threat during the time of the Thirty Years War.
Alone among the cities we stayed in on this trip, Salzburg has no trams in its center city, only trolleybuses, run by the same company that runs the interurban tramway out of the city to the north.
In early afternoon, the group walks down to the nearest stop for trolleybus route 1, and boards a trolleybus of that ilk to head for the Hbf. Here, we go not to the main station, but downstairs in the trolleybus station to the concourse and then to the island platform (two tracks) of the Salzburgerlokalbahn. This is a standard gauge operation that uses electric tramcars or railway cars for its passenger operations, but has heavy-duty electric locomotives for its freight operations. It runs north out of Salzburg, on the remnants of a once much larger “interurban” system that served Germany as well as Austria.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-13-05 |
Salzburgerlokalbahn |
N/A |
Salzburg-Oberndorf |
Vintage tramcar |
N/A |
|
5-13-05 |
Salzburgerlokalbahn |
N/A |
Oberndorf-Salzburg |
Vintage tramcar |
N/A |
The line runs due north out of the lower-level (Salzburg Lokalbahn) of Salzburg Hauptbahnhof, emerging into daylight almost immediately. Angling north-northwest past the line’s shops (on the west side fo the line), there is a connection on the east side of the line that goes over to the main line adjacent to the carriage sidings and roundhouse beyond the north end of the main line station. The lokalbahn line continues through Salzburg Itzling, , Maria Main, Hagenau, Berghein, Schlachthof, Muntigel, Siggerwisen, Anthering, and Acharting. The line angles northwest, and then back north-northwest again, through Weitwörth-Nussdorf, Dichtensiedling, angling northwest through Oberndorf Markt, and then curving around to the north-northeast to Oberndorf bei Salzburg.
What we see when we descend to the platform are cars of a regular service train on the railway. After it leaves, a vintage tramcar, built in 1907, appears that will be our train, but it will follow the next service train out of the station to ensure time for photographs of our train out in the countryside. The line surfaces almost immediately north of the main station, passes the operation’s shops, and after a few miles in Salzburg’s suburbs runs out into open countryside. After stopping in a passing siding for a southbound freight train to pass, hauled by two steeple-cab electric locomotives, and then at another location for an opposing service train to pass, we stop out in the middle of nowhere for the passengers to take pictures, and then continue to Oberndorf, the outer destination of our trip. Here, there is a 75-minute break, during which most of the tour members walk over to the bank of the Salzach (which forms the border of Austria and Germany out here), and then walk north to the “Silent Night” chapel for which the famed Christmas Carol was written some two centuries ago.
Just before we are ready to return, Angelika, a high-level manager within the railway, descends from an outbound regular service train and joins the group. Her English-language commentary enlivens the rest of the trip. We run back into the city, passing a 2-10-0 steam locomotive (44.661, built by Borsig in 1941)) preparing for excursion service along the way, and back into the shops near the end of the run. The shop tour is interesting, although not as mechanically oriented as the one on the Zugsptizbahn, with a lengthy showing of the railway’s stores. The highlight is the visit to the dispatching center for a description of how the railroad controls its operations, as rush hour operations are going on. During this visit, there is an interruption as all the photographers head for windows to take photos of the steam locomotive heading by on its way to the main platforms of the Hbf for its excursion. Back in the workshops, Paul wouldn’t go down in the pit, whereupon “little” Bob Kerker, who can stand upright under the tram above the pit, quips that this is the first time his stature has been an advantage!
Following this, we take the tram back to the Hbf, where Werner takes many group members to the information office to make plans for their options time on Saturday. We’ve already done this, so after looking at the steamer in the main station, we head for the trolleybus station to return to the hotel, based on general instructions from Werner.
Leaving the Hbf for the trolleybus station outside, we discover that there are still a couple of things Werner hasn’t told us: whether the trolleybus route to the hotel originates at the Hbf, and if not, which of its two destinations designates the trolleybus we should take to the hotel. In the absence of these vital pieces of information (and without fully realizing that they are absent), we get on a trolleybus of the correct route but going away from the hotel, and have to ride it back past the Hbf before we head in the direction of the old town and the hotel. We nonetheless arrive back at the hotel in plenty of time for our group dinner.
Most of the sights of old Salzburg are located very close together in the small area between the river and the mountain to its west. After breakfast, but still before 8 am, we head out by ourselves into the old town area to view its sights. After walking through the town square, where a parade seems to be forming up, we visit the Cathedral on the north side of the square, and then St. Peter’s Church and graveyard just to its north. We’re then on the first funicular tram up to the fortress on the mountain above, at 9 am. We spend an hour or so viewing the sights from both the east and west sides of the fortress walls, including talking to an Englishwoman who informs us that the Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden, which some group members had planned on visiting today, is still closed due to deep snow at that altitude.
After our time at the fortress, we walk down the steep slope to the level of the Monchsberg, at which we walk north on the hiking path as far as the location of the road tunnel underneath. Here, we turn and walk down the path/stairs behind the Festspielhaus(es) to emerge in the streets of the old city not far from the entrance to St. Peter’s. We walk north, along the front of the Festspielhaus (which is being renovated), and then in Herbert von Karajan Platz (at the east end of the tunnel), turn southeast through the area where the Saturday market is operating. We stop for morning coffee/tea at one of the stalls, and then visit the University Church and the Franciscan Church, before a short return visit to the hotel before our afternoon excursion.
Leaving the hotel again, we head for the trolleybus stop, and ride to Mirabellplatz, where we get off and cross the street to view the famous scene of the Mirabell ornamental gardens with the fortress nicely placed as the backdrop. This scene will be familiar to many people as the place where Julie Andrews taught the children ‘music’ in the movie ‘Sound of Music’ some 40 years ago. We return to the trolleybus stop and continue to the Hbf..
This afternoon, Chris and I are riding, by ourselves, up the north ramp, through the Tauern Tunnel, and down the south ramp to Villach, thus covering the remaining Alpine rail crossing that we otherwise wouldn’t have covered on either last year’s tour or this one.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-14-05 |
ÖBB (EC 113) |
1304 |
Salzburg-Villach |
EuroCity |
1116027-5 |
|
5-14-05 |
ÖBB (EC 691) |
1611 |
Villach-Salzburg |
EuroCity |
1044003-0 |
We get to the station with plenty of time to get some coffee and apple juice before going out onto the platform to wait for our EuroCity train to arrive. When it does, we board the second car with First Class seating, a composite car going on, with the second class car behind it, to Zagreb, in Croatia, rather than with the rest of the train to Klagenfurt. We find it interesting that the magazine provided in this car is bi-lingual—in Croat and German!
Salzburg Hauptbahnhof has fourteen tracks, numbered 1-5, 11-15, 21-24, with the first five arrayed on three main platforms, the northernmost of which lies adjacent to the station buildings, and the others as bay platforms at both the east and west ends of the central island (between tracks 2 and 3), which also has many buildings located on it. There are two separate pedestrian subways connecting the platforms. On the east side of Salzburg station, coach yards and locomotive depot are on the north side of the line, with freight yards to the south. Platforms are provided with individual roofs, umbrella shed only for the outer island and the bays, but more comprehensive near the platform centers. The main buildings on the north side open directly onto the (trolley)bus station in the forecourt. Freight lines pass on the south side of the outer island platform.
There is a combination wye and flying junction at the east end of Salzburg station (which is actually pointing more to the northeast), adjacent to the coach yards and locomotive depot, with the Linz line straight ahead (with the eastbound track on a flyover bridge), and the Bischofshofen line turning sharply around to the south (with the northbound track apssing under the rbidge). The line from the junction east of Salzburg is double track throughout, as far as Swarzach-St. Veit. Heading south through the city, the line passes through Salzburg Sam, Salzburg Gnigl, Salzburg Parsch, Salzburg Aigl and Salzburg Süd. Salzburg Süd has two side platforms, with station buildings to the west and the outer end of a trolleybus route in its forecourt Leaving the city behind, the line passes through Elsbethen and Puch-Oberalm to Hallein, where it angles southeast. Hallein has three platforms serving four tracks, with extra tracks between 1 and 2 and station buildings on the west side. The line turns south again at Vigaun, angling south-southeast at Kuchl.
Golling-Abtenau is the outer end of Salzburg commuter services, and has two platforms serving three tracks with station buildings to the east. The river, on the west side of the line, makes a large bend to the east around a promontory, leading to the line crossing the river on a through truss bridge, passing through a tunnel, and then crossing the river again on another bridge. At the river crossing on the north side of the tunnel, a new bridge is being built for the railway, with southbound trains using the new track, and northbound trains using the old track. The catenary on the new track is not yet energized on the bridge, so our southbound train coasts across that segment.
South of Golling-Abtenau, the line curves southwest for a short distance, and then south again, closely following the course of the Salzach, and passing through Sulzau and Tennech. Werfen has two platforms with three tracks and station buildings to the west. The line then passes through Pfarr Werfen. North of Bischofshofen, the single-track line from Selzthal trails in from the east, across the river.
Bischofshofen station has four platforms serving seven tracks, with station buildings to the west. The line curves along the river through Mitterberghütten and then heads south-southwest. St. Johann in Pangau has two platforms serving three tracks, with station buildings to the east, and the line crosses the river to its west side. After a short stretch heading due south, the line turns somewhat to the west of southwest, still fllowing the river. The line crosses back to the east side of the river just before entering Swarzach-St. Veit, which has three platforms serving five tracks with station buildings to the west and stub tracks at the north end. There is a yard on the east side that is home to Maintenance of Way vehicles. South of the station, the line to Zell am See and Innsbruck heads off to the west, along the river, while the Tauern line climbs the southeastern hillside, which is currently a construction zone adding a second track and, of necessity, rebuilding all the tunnels on the grade in the process (to the arc roof style double track, as seen on the new tunnels on the Arlberg line as well). There is an older single-track route for the line curving along the hillside to the outerside of the new tunnels.
After passing through Lofairn, separation from the Salzach valley is through a tunnel into the hillside, taking the line to a south-southeasterly heading, after which the line, now expanded to double track, runs along the west side of a rising valley, through more world famous resorts such as Bad Gastein, climbing further up the western hillside through spectacular mountain scenery, until it reaches the Tauern Tunnel. There is a closed station at Klammstein, Dorf Gastein has two outer platforms, with station buildings to the east and two additional center tracks, after which the line turns south Bad Hofgastein has two platforms with three tracks and the station buildings to the east.. The line continues south-southeast along the western valley wall, through Bad Hofgastein Haltestelle and Angertal to Bad Gastein, where it turns southwest for a short distance. Bad Gastein itself also has two platforms with three tracks and the station buildings to the east, and is located high above the community it serves. The line is then single track to Backstein, where it curves back to South-southeast and double again through the Tauern Tunnel. Auto shuttles are run through the tunnel enabling drivers to avoid circuitous road routings. On the south side of the tunnel, the line hugs the northeastern side of a valley descending to the southeast, crossing many viaducts and bridges over side valleys and the like.
Along here, there is more work being done to double track the line, from Mallnitz down to Kolbnitz. The present, single-track, line is at least the second formation along here, since there is an old formation, closer in to the hillside, with abandoned viaducts further up the side valleys, and at one point, between tunnels south of the Tauern Tunnel, a viaduct orthogonal to the present line, with the old formation crossing the new at grade and then running on the outside of a hillside spur that is pierced by a tunnel on the present formation. Mallnitz-Obervellach station has two platforms with three tracks, station buildings to the southwest and a freight yard to the northeast. After a short stretch due south, the line turns southeast, passing through Kaponig, Oberfalkenstein, Penk, Kolbnitz, Mühldorf-Möhlbrücke, and Pusarnitz.
As the Tauern line reaches the valley floor, east of Pusarnitz, there is another line running in from the west, joining with ours west of the substantial station at Spittal-Millstättersee (three platforms, five tracks, station buildings to the north, with a yard across from the station on the south side, and additional yards on the north side on both ends of the station), where trains on the Tauern line interchange with those on the other line. This is the (now) branch to Lienz with a connection onward through Toblach to Fortezza. The kilometer posts along the Tauern change from showing distance from Salzburg to showing a much greater distance from somewhere further east (Vienna?), indicating that this had once been a main line from the Vienna direction towards Toblach (built by the Südbahn in the days when Toblach and Fortezza were in Austria), rather than simply part of the Tauern line. East of Spittal, there is a petrochemical plant on the north side of the line, and further east is a huge industrial facility on the north side of the line, with quarries up above and further east, all served by hopper cars.
The line continues southeastward, through Rothernturn, Ferndorf, Markt Paternion, Paternion-Feistritz, Weissenstein-Kellerberg and Gummern. Just west of Villach, a main line trails in at a major junction, carrying traffic to and from Venice, to the southwest, and to and from Ljubljana, to the southeast through the Karawanken Tunnel under the Austro-Slovenian border. Villach has four platforms serving seven tracks with station buildings to the south and a coach yard on the north side. There is a freight yard on the south side of the line, east of the station.
The Tauern line diverges from the way we came in on Friday all the way back at Swarzach-St. Veit, so the first part of our trip is a run up the Salzach valley, but sitting on a different side of the train from Friday. The double track segments of this line are set up for left-hand running, in the manner of the Sudbahn lines south from Vienna that we will encounter later in the trip. (Werner says that the process of double-tracking the Tauern line has been going on since the mid 1990s.) At Villach, we leave this train and some 30 minutes later board a return train that has come from Klagenfurt. This returns us to Salzburg by the same route down which we came. North of Swarzach, a heavy rainstorm comes off the mountainside, but the rain has stopped by the time we reach Salzburg. We walk a different route from trolleybus to hotel, passing Mozart’s birthplace and seeing Dave Wiley and Bob Miller looking for a restaurant along the way. We eat dinner in a small restaurant not far from that hotel, in the warren of streets in the old town.
Except for the Salzburgerlokalbahn excursion, all of our time since reaching Garmisch Partenkirchen six days ago has been in the mountains (not surprising, since 72% of Austria’s land area is mountainous, a greater fraction than in Switzerland). Although the extremities of today’s trips into the Salzkammergut, east and northeast of Salzburg, are on the northern fringes of the mountains, the main line we will use to reach the small railways getting to those extremities is on the greater Danubian plain.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-15-05 |
ÖBB (IC 545) |
0810 |
Salzburg to Attnam-Puchheim |
ÖBB single-level |
1044031-1 |
|
5-15-05 |
ÖBB (E 3410) |
0913 |
Attnam-Puchheim to Gmunden |
ÖBB single-level |
1116103-2 |
|
5-15-05 |
Gmunden Tramway |
0930 |
Gmunden station to lakefront |
Tramcar |
N/A |
|
5-15-05 |
Stern & Hafferl (R 8118) |
1040 |
Gmunden Seebahnhof to Vorchdorf-Eggenburg |
Electric railcar |
N/A |
|
5-15-05 |
Stern & Hafferl (R8214) |
1147 |
Vorchdorf-Eggenburg to Lambach |
Electric railcar |
N/A |
|
5-15-05 |
ÖBB (R3014/E1648) |
1232 |
Lambach-Vöcklamart |
ÖBB single-level |
1044 |
|
5-15-05 |
Stern & Hafferl |
1336 |
Vöcklamart-Attersee |
Electric railcar |
N/A |
|
5-15-05 |
Stern & Hafferl |
1452 |
Attersee-Vöcklamart |
Electric railcar |
N/A |
|
5-15-05 |
ÖBB (E 1742) |
1551 |
Vöcklamart-Salzburg |
ÖBB single-level |
1142650-9) |
Due to an early start to today’s trips, breakfast is especially early for us at 6 am, and we are provided by the hotel with box lunches to take with us. Werner’s estimate of when we need to leave to hotel to catch a trolleybus to the Hbf in time for the train is correct in terms of the trolleybus getting us there in time, but some 20-25 minutes early in terms of waiting at the bus stop for the Sunday morning trolleybus to arrive.
(The Route Description for this segment appears below, when we traverse the line in the opposite direction later in the day.) The train to Attnam-Puchheim is a regional that doesn’t stop at the local stations along the way, including one that we will use later in the day. At Attnam-Puchheim, we transfer to the train to Gmunden in a side platform on the southwest corner of the station, departing four minutes late after waiting for a connection from Vienna.
The Gmunden line is single track, heading south-southeast, through Wankheim and Aurachkirchen, At Pinsdorf, a very simple single platform station, there is a manual crossing gate control at the south end of the station on the west side. The line turns southeast, and then very sharply southwest. Gmunden has tracks to the east and the station buildings to the west. At Gmunden, we transfer to the Gmunden tram, one of three vehicles owned by that organization, for the mile-and-a-half trip past the locomotive shop on the west side and then down the steep hill to the lakeside. From here, most of us walk around the outlet of the lake to the Gmunden Seebahnhof on the other side of this end of the lake.
At this location, the toilets are next to an outdoor café next door (the station building is occupied by a model railway), so when I walk around to use the toilet, I also enquire about the availability of coffee and tea to “take away”. I can’t express that in German, but the server assures me he has that right up until he puts the drinks in china cups. When I show him where I want to take them (across a hedge or a medium walk around the hedge), he laughs, and I call Chris to come and collect them across the hedge while I walk around. When we’re done, she takes the cups back and makes her own visit to the facilities. All of this transpires while we wait for our next train to arrive.
The railway line here is a meter gauge Stern & Hafferl electrified light rail line, one of several in this region. Gmunden-Seebahnhof is a single track station with platform and buildings on the north side, the buildings now given over to the local model railway layout. The rest of the stations along this single-track line are but shelters with paved surrounds. The line heads northeast, through closely-spaced stations at Gmunden-Traundorf, Engelhof Lokalbahn, Baumgarten-Waldbach, Gschwandt-Rabersberg, and Gschwandt Schule, and more widely-spaced stations at Neuhuss, Eigengattern, as it turns north-northeast, Liazing, Kirchham Ort, Kirchham, where it turns northeast again, and Falkenohren, to Vorchdorf-Eggenburg
When the train arrives, it proves to be a single electric car, not quite the same as a tramcar but very similar. As the train leaves Gmunden, we see a standard gauge track adjacent on the west side (with some dual gauge track along the line we’re riding on), serving a medium-size industrial plant; this line diverges to the north soon afterwards (in Engelhof), to reach Lambach by a different route. At Vorchdorf-Eggenburg, about half way to the main line at Lambach, the narrow gauge line ends at an interchange yard with a standard gauge line run by the same company. Many of us eat our box lunches while waiting here between trains.
The Vorchdorf-Eggenburg narrow-gauge station building is on the northwest side of the layout. In the center are tracks going to the carbarn to the northeast of the layout, and on the southeast side are the station buildings for the standard gauge line. There are several large logging yards with sawmills. The standard gauge line heads north, through closely-spaced stations at Vorchdorf Schule, Feldham, Kösslwand and Blaunitz. After a longer gap to Au, stations are again closely-spaced through Steinfeld and Bad Wimsbach-Neydharting. The line then turns abruptly west, and then northeast as the freight-only line comes in from the southwest. Stadl-Paura has a building on the northwest side. The line makes a sweeping counter-clockwise turn and enters Lambach station from the northeast
The standard gauge train is another electric railcar, similar to but a bit larger than the narrow gauge car by virtue of being built to standard gauge dimensions. This car takes us to Lambach on the Salzburg-Linz main line, where we board a local main-line train headed back to Attnam-Puchheim, and after a wait there to make connections on and off express trains in both directions, continue under a different train number onwards to Vöcklamart and (without us) Salzburg.
Lambach station has two platforms with three main tracks plus two bays at the east end next to the station buildings. Initially, the line heads west-southwest. Lambach Markt has low-level platforms for both tracks, and station buildings on the south side. Neukirchen bei Lambach where a line to Haag am Hausbruck goes off to the northwest, has two side platforms, after which the line turns southwest. Breitenschützing has two main platforms. Schwanenstadt has two platforms with three main tracks and an additional center track, with station buildings to the south.
Attnam-Puchheim has two high-level platforms serving three main tracks, two eastern and two western bays on the south side, next to the station buildings, with three more low-level platforms on the north side, with yard tracks to their north. In addition to the line off to the south heading for Gmunden, there is also a line leaving to the northwest heading for Ried im Winkreis. The line towards Salzburg now heads due west. Vöcklabruck has two platforms with three main tracks and an additional center track, with station buildings to the south. A line goes off to the southwest, between Vöcklabruck and Timelkam, heading for Kammer-Schörfling, at the north end of the Attersee Timelkam has four low-level platforms, one for each track, with station buildings to the south. Neukirchen-Gampern has two side platforms with station buildings on the north side. Redl-Zipf has three low-level platforms with station buildings on the south side. The line turns due south for a short distance, and then turns southwest into Vöcklamart, which has two outer platforms serving three tracks (one of them used by the Attersee line), connected by a pedestrian subway, with two center tracks and buildings on the north side.
At Timelkam, there are several 2050s, two 1020 krokodils and three 101s in a ‘dead line’ on the north side. At Vöcklamart, we leave the main-line train and cross under the tracks to the Atterseebahn platform on the southwest corner of the station. This line is another Stern & Hafferl meter-gauge property, operated by electric cars painted differently from the last one, but otherwise very similar.
The single-track line diverges sharply to the southeast, immediately west of Vöcklamart station. After passing through Vöcklamart Lokalbahn and Haid, the line turns southwest, through Walchen, Schmidham and Walsberg, and then southeast again through closely-spaced stations at Kogl, St. Georgen im Attergau, which has station buildings on the west side, while all other stops are shelters, St. Georgen im Attergau Seniorheim, Therm, Stottham and Palmsdorf. Attersee has station buildings on the west side and the carbarn on the east side of the terminal track.
The car takes us south, descending through bucolic farmland to the eponymous town on the north shore of the eponymous lake. Here, we’re treated to a short tour of the carbarn, and then told we have a 90 minute layover until the next train back to Vöcklamart and a very poor connection with a train back to Salzburg. A strange note in the itinerary has already alerted me to a difficulty here, and a quick perusal of the posted schedule when we arrived at Attersee confirms not only my suspicions, but shows an earlier car back north, with a much better connection to Salzburg.
I raise this issue with Werner, who tells me the 90 minutes is the time until the next car to Vöcklamart. I demur, and he insists. When I comment that my timetable reading skills must have deteriorated substantially in the last half hour or so, Werner asks the operator of our incoming car, who confirms that he is taking this car back north some 50 minutes earlier than we are scheduled to leave, just as I had read on the posted schedule. There is still half an hour in which to patronize the lakeside café across the street, and we do so, along with many other members of the group. Paul elects to come back with us, and I had the impression that Hamp and Sue would do so as well, but when we get up to leave the café, they remain seated.
The three of us are just about the only people on the car for much of its trip, and after a less than twenty minute wait at Vöcklamart, we board a main-line local train that has us back in Salzburg at 4:20 pm (compared to the 6:20 pm shown on the itinerary). Werner later says that by taking an eastbound local train to Attnam-Puchheim, and then an express west to Salzburg, they had returned to Salzburg just before 6 pm.
The line, heading southwest from Vocklamart, is surrounded by agricultural fields and rolling hills, with the north face of the mountains south of Gmunden and Attersee visible off to the south. In what follows, “four low-level platforms” means four tracks at this point, two of them side tracks, while “two side platforms” implies only two tracks at this point, both of them main tracks. Frankenmarkt has four low-level platforms, with station buildings on the north side. The line turns generally west and curves back and forth through Pöndorf, which has two side platforms, to Oberhofen-Zell, which also has two side platforms. The line then heads south-southwest to Ederbauer, which has four low-level platforms with station buildings on the north side, and turns slightly north of west to Strasswalchen, which has four low-level platforms with station buildings on the north side. There are sidings on both sides of the line (with loaded autoracks when we pass through).
The line turns southwest, and a line south from Braunau am Inn, hard by the German border, trails in just before reaching Steindorf bei Strasswalchen, which has four low-level platforms with station buildings on the north side. Continuing southwest, Neumarkt-Köstendorf has two side platforms with station buildings to the south. Weng and Wallersee both have two side platforms with station buildings to the north and at the latter the eponymous lake is to the southeast. Seekirchen am Waller has two side platforms and two center tracks, with station buildings to the south, after which the line turns south. Eugendorf has two side platforms and another (small) lake alongside to the south, after which the line turns southwest again, through Hallwang-Elixhausen, south through Salzburg-Maria Plain, and then curves southwest again,
At the junction between the line to/from Linz and the line to/from Bischofshofen, the eastbound Linz line climbs up onto a flyover crossing the lines turning south to Bischofhofen and beyond, while the westbound line from Linz comes alongside the curving lines on their north side to enter the station.
Back in Salzburg, we take yet a different walking route from the bus stop to the hotel through old Salzburg, and then eat dinner in the restaurant with the Moorish name and Indian cook where Dave and Bob had eaten the previous night. The food proves to be excellent, and the maitre d’ regales us with tales of his many visits to Southern California.
Today, we are going to Graz (as a good starting spot for a ride over the Semmering the following day, that also has a tramway museum), not over the Tauern route as originally advertised (which is why we did that route on Saturday), but via a railway town called Selzthal, a junction in the mountains, that is the site of a recently-established railway museum for main line electric locomotives. It is a visit to the latter, as well as the regional dispatching center, that takes us to Selzthal. To the surprise of most tour group members, this turns out to be not a business day but a national holiday—the Christian feast day of Whitsuntide. When apprised of this, even many of the Christians in the group don’t know what it is. (It’s of particular important to Anglicans/Episcopalians, so I know what it is from my schooldays in England, a country with an established religion taught in schools.)
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-16-05 |
ÖBB (EC 111) |
0904 |
Salzburg-Bischofshofen |
EuroCity |
1116 |
|
5-16-05 |
ÖBB (IC 515) |
1013 |
Bischofshofen-Selzthal |
Class 4010 EMU |
N/A |
|
5-16-05 |
ÖBB (OEC 669) |
1548 |
Selzthal-Graz |
InterCity |
1116243-2 |
We check out of the hotel and board our special bus to the station, watching our luggage being loaded into a very small van as we do so. At the station, we board our train south to Bischofshofen, and discover that we’re going to be riding in a blue and gray Slovenian-owned carriage that forms a part of this EuroCity train destined for Belgrade, rather than Klagenfurt for most of the train. The route to Bischofshofen is the same way we arrived in Salzburg three days earlier, although I do observe that three stations that we haven’t stopped at any time have two side platforms, with no obvious station buildings! At Bischofshofen station, we leave the EuroCity and wait for our connecting train to Selzthal, which is coming from further south or west. When it arrives, it proves to be an EMU of a variety that we haven’t ridden before. Bob Miller recognizes the type, however, and its arrival (and our boarding of it) prompts a discussion based on several of us having Platform 5’s book on Austrian locomotives and powered vehicles.
Leaving Bischofhofen in a northerly direction, the line turns east, crossing the Salzach on a multi-span through girder bridge as it does so, and then enters a tunnel. The line is single track as far as Stainach-Irdring. On the east side of the tunnel, the track curves back and forth across the narrow valley of the River Enns, with villages on the valley floor, passing through Pöham, Muttau, Niederfritz-St. Martin, where the line turns south, Eben im Pongau. Altenmarkt in Pongau, by which the line has turned east again, and Radstadt, which has four low-level platforms, with station buildings to the north
The line continues generally eastward, through Ennswald Forstau, Mandling, a short southeastward stretch, Pichl, and Schladming, which has three platforms serving four tracks, with a center island and station buildings to the south. Angling east-northest, the line passes through Oberhaus-Markt Haus, Haus, Aich-Assach, Pruggern, Grössming, Stein an der Enns, and turning northeast through Öblarn, Niederöblarn, St. Martin am griming, and Trautenfels. The line coming south from Attnam-Puchheim and Gmunden and then east from Hallstatt trails in from the west just before Stainach-Irdring, which has three platforms serving five tracks and station buildings to the north. The line passes through Wörschach-Schwefelbad and turns eastward at Liezen, which has four low-level platforms with station buildings to the north.
There is a junction at the southwest end of Selzthal station with the line from Graz coming in from the southeast. The locomotive depot, with its roundhouse and turntable, is on the north side of the track at this junction. Selzthal station has one large island platform with the station buildings on it and through tracks on each side. There are two bays to the northeast, and two bays to the southwest. The station is accessed by a pedestrian subway from the southeast side, and has a large freight yard on its northwest side. On the east side at the northeast end of the station and across an access road is a tower on the building that contains the railway offices. This tower contains the room from which the signalers operate the lines around Selzthal. At the northeast end of the station and yard, the departing lines are heading for St. Valentin and for Amstetten, both on the Vienna-Linz main line.
The line to Selzthal is through pretty, mountainous country. Near Schladming, the houses all seem to be chalets. At Haus, we wait for an opposing train. The valley near Stainach-Irdring, has broadened considerably compared to further west. At Selzthal, we arrive from the south(west) end of the station, and are met by a vintage electric locomotive hauling, as its entire train, an ÖBB party car, emblazoned with McDonald’s and Lego logos and childish script, and containing many kinds of children’s toys. Chris immediately starts building a house with the Lego construction toys while the train moves slowly from the station back to the roundhouse we had passed coming in, location of the aforementioned electric locomotive museum, a few hundred yards away.
Here, we disembark, and watch as the locomotive and then the car are turns on the turntable and stowed away in their respective stalls in the roundhouse. Our guide (the museum’s director) briefly describes some of the locomotives and equipment around us, and then we walk out the back side of the facility to go over to what appears to be the only restaurant around that is open on this holiday, where most group members will have lunch. (On these days with included breakfasts, Chris and I intentionally eat enough breakfast that we don’t need to buy a non-included lunch, since at home we normally only eat twice a day. On this occasion, we simply have coffee and tea.)
After “lunch’, the group receives a guided tour of the roundhouse and the collection, including a class 1116 that is only five days old, and is in daily operation. (Siemens is building 250 class 1116 “Taurus” locos for ÖBB, of which this is number 245, built two weeks previously. They will then build 15 class 1216s (identical except for being able to operate on four voltages instead of one).) We also see all the vintage members of the collection. Everything here is in operating condition. Locomotive 1080, which brought us into the facility was built in 1924. Then, we walk back to the station so that we can pass the stuffed-and-mounted 2-10-0 ‘Kriegslok’ austerity steam locomotive (52.7046), built by Floridsdorf in 1943. Then we pass by the entrance to the station and go instead to the fourth floor Regional Dispatching Center. Here, in addition to explanations of the dispatching consoles and local operations, we are able to go out on the balcony for spectacular views over the station and yard. The software in the Dispatching Center does route setting between entry and exit points, automatically setting and switches and signals in between. There are two dispatching desks.
While we’re here, a train with one coach and many flatcars with over-the-road trucks carried on them pulls in from the southeast, and Werner explains that it’s a “Rolling Road” service between Ljubljana, Croatia, and Wels, Austria (west of Linz) designed to keep the heavy trucks off the mountain roads of Austria, in much the same way as the Swiss have tried to do for north-south truck traffic crossing their country. As this explanation is completed, a southbound version of the same train pulls in. North of Selzthal, these trains will take the more westerly of the two lines heading north, through St. Valentin (rather than heading west on the line we had arrived on, and then taking the line north to the west side of Linz), so that the train can be correctly oriented entering Linz even though it has traveled a longer distance. There are around 240 trains a day through the station and yard at Selzthal, which is much bigger in railway terms than the local community would justify in terms of traffic.
Visits completed, we return to the station, our train comes in from the west and replaces a locomotive on the east end with one on the (now) south end while we board. We take the left fork of the lines at the south end of the station and head south. The line southest of Selzthal crosses over the divide between Black Sea drainage (the Danube, Salzach and tributaries) and Adriatic drainage (everything south of the middle range of the Alps, this far east) on by far the lowest and least distinctive pass we have seen so far, anywhere, running through a broad valley at first.
The line leaves Selzthal station heading southwest, takes the left fork at the junction, and immediately curves around to head eastward. Stadt Rottenmann has a single island platform. There are closed stations at Rottenmann and Bãrndrof-Süschendorf. Trieben has a single island platform, with additional tracks on either side and a large industry on the west side of the line. The line now climbs up the north side of the valley, through Gaishorn, turning southeast through Trieglwang and Wald am Schoberpass, and over the Schoberpass, which appears to be nothing more than a low saddle. Descending to the east southeast, the line passes through Kalwang, Mautern, Kammern, Seiz, and Traboch-Timmersdorf, after which it turns south. The main line from Klagenfurt comes in from the southwest, and the line from Selzthal joins it in heading southeast into St. Michael.
St. Michael has two platforms serving three tracks, with the station buildings on the north side and a yard on the south side. Rail Cargo Austria has facilities to the northwest of the station. The track swings to the northeast, east of the station, and then runs along the north side of a river up above a road, and passes through a tunnel before reaching Leoben. The line passes through Leoben Hinterberg, and turns north through Leoben Göss. A line south from Vordenberg trails in from the west as the line turns east. Leoben Hauptbahnhof has three platforms serving five tracks, with the station buildings to the south. East of the station, the line crosses the river, passing through Niklasdorf and Oberaich. Further east, the tracks curve southeast (with other tracks forming the Klagenfurt-Vienna line continuing east), cross the river Mur as it turns southeastward from its former southwestward heading, and join with other tracks already running north-south (the original Südbahn line from Vienna to Graz), which was built as left-hand running, and is still operated that way.
The line now curves east, south, and southeast again, and passes through Pernegg and Mixnitz-Bãrenschützklamm. Following the river, the line curves west-southwest, southeast, and southwest again, thorugh Frohnleiten, and then curves gently southeast and then south through Peggau-Deutschfeistritz, where a branch line to Ubelbach curves away to the west, Stübing, Gratwein-Gratkorn, where the line turns southeast, and Judendorf-Strassengel. The line turns south-southeast and crosses to the west side of the river north of Graz. There is a yard on the west side of the line north of the station, with a carriage shed to the east. The line curves somewhat westward just north of the station, there is a locomotive depot on the west side and then carriage sidings on both sides. Graz station has four platforms serving seven tracks, with a bay at the south end on the east side, the station buildings on the east side and tram stops outside in the station forecourt. The station buildings date from just after WWII (1955), due to wartime damage.
In Graz, we take a public tram for the more-than-walking –distance trip to our hotel, leaving this tram in Südtirolerplatz (yet another one, but this one is not outside the main station) for the short walk south along the west side of the river to our hotel. Confusingly, we first pass another hotel with a somewhat similar name, which Werner at first mistakes for our hotel.) We later have a group dinner at the hotel, at which, when asked for table water, the waiter serves us (Chris and me) still bottled water, and then later tries to charge us for it. When I tell him that we had asked for plain old water, and that if they can’t manage to serve us that it’s their problem, not ours, he backs off in a hurry! It was clear watching their operation that they were intent on selling all of us profitable, preferably alcoholic, non-included drinks. We eat with Bill and Happy Pross, and discover that they had been at the AAPRCO Conventions that we had been at in 1995 and 1998.
Prior to the mid 1860s, railway development in Austria occurred in the context of the full Habsburg Empire, with many trunk lines radiating from Vienna. (The railways were originally built to facilitate the transportation of troops from one end of the empire to the other.) After that time, the empire itself was smaller (Lombardy and Venetia had left), and the railways in the Hungarian part of the dual monarchy developed somewhat differently from those in the Austrian part. Only in 1919/20 were Austria and Hungary made completely separate countries, and reduced to their present sizes, and their railways systems thus reduced correspondingly.
The trunk routes radiating from Vienna included:
Kaiser Ferdinands Nordbahn, opened from Floridsdorf to Deutsch Wagram in 1837. Within a few years the line reached (present-day names) Brno, Ostrava na Morave, Krakow and Lvov (Lemberg). In 1906, the KFNB was nationalized and became part of the Kaiserlich-Königliche Staatsbahnen (kkStB).
The Südbahn started with the Vienna-Gloggnitz line, followed by its extension over the Semmering, the first mountain railway in Europe, and ultimately extending to large areas of the current states of Austria (lines to Graz, Klagenfurt, Lienz, and Innsbruck), Hungary (southwest corner), Slovenia (almost all the lines in the country), Croatia (all the lines in at least the western part of the country) and Italy (lines to Trieste and Venice, and along the Po valley, as well as those in the erstwhile South Tyrol). The Südbahn was affected much earlier than other Austrian railways by the consequences of altered borders and the division of commercial organizations between different countries, when Venezia and Lombardy became part of Italy in the 1860s. The part of the railway remaining in Austria was nationalized in the 1920s.
The Staatseisenbahn Gesellschaft (StEG) was opened from Vienna to Raab (now Györ) in 1854, and later extended to Budapest (to the east) and Bunn (now Brno) to the north, in competition with the lines of the KFN. The (greater-)Hungarian portion of this railway became part of Hungarian State Railways (Magyar Államvasutak, MAV) in 1889. The portion of this railway remaining within Austria was nationalized in the 1920s.
The Österreichische Nordwestbahn (ÖNWB) owned the lines from Vienna through Znojmo to Prague and onwards to the Prussian border, as well as several intercity and interurban lines in Bohemia. The company was nationalized in 1909.
The Kaiserin Elizabeth Bahn (KEB) operated the Vienna to Salzburg line from 1858, and was a forerunner of what is commonly called the Westbahn, today. It was nationalized in 1884.
The Kronprinz Rudolf Bahn (KRB) was formed in 1868 to operate many of the lines in the region south of the Westbahn and west of the Südbahn, including the line from Amstetten through Selzthal to St. Michael and the line onwards through the Mur valley through Graz and into Slovenia as far as Ljubljana, often thought of as part of the Südbahn. It was nationalized in 1884.
The Kaiserlich-Königliche Staatsbahnen (kkStB) was formed in 1884 through the nationalization of the KEB and KRB. This railway was responsible fro the development of the Tauern line over the Alps from Salzburg to Villach, Görz and Trieste. As other railways were nationalized, up through 1909, they became part of the kkStB.
In addition to these trunk lines, there were a number of smaller local lines, including the Zillertalbahn and the Achenseebahn, that remained outside the nationalized railways.
From 1920 onwards, there are three distinct periods that must be considered as far as cross-border services to the southeast, east, and north are concerned: the inter-war period of the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet bloc period from 1945 to 1989, and the period of liberalization since, leading to the period of European Union membership across these borders, starting in May 2004. John Russell, a rail enthusiast and long-time resident of Vienna, kindly supplied some of the following information:
After an interim period in 1918-19 with a Deutschõsterreichische Stattsbahnen (DÖStB) a state railway, the Österreichische Stattsbahnen (ÖStB) was formed in 1919 in the new state of Austria, and was renamed Österreichische Bundesbahnen (BBÖ) in 1921. This state railway was absorbed into the German Railway (Deutsche Reichsbahn - DR) in 1938 after the Anschluss. In 1945, a new state railway, first Österreichische Stattsbahnen (ÖStB) again, and then Österreichische Bundesbahnen (this time ÖBB), from 1947, was formed and still runs the railway today. For the lines that remained in the rump of Austria after 1920, little else or an organizational or traffic nature has changed. What is complicated is what happened to all those lines built from Vienna in a star shape to the various important cities (e.g. Krakow, Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Trieste and Venice), which were all part of the empire at some time (Venice having been lost as early as the 1860s). Cross-border routes were especially problematical during the Soviet bloc period from 1945 to 1989.
The first difficulties arose in the 1920s, as a result of the border drawing process between the rump of Austria and the rump of Hungary, for example. The three districts of Burgenland, southeast of Vienna, had been part of Austria since the division into the dual monarchies in the 1860s. In the early 1920s, these districts voted, by district, on whether to be part of the new Austria or the new Hungary. The northern and southern districts joined Austria. The central district, including the old provincial capital of Sopron, joined Hungary. This meant that Viennese commuter trains to and from Deutschkreuz, the major city of the southern district, could not reach that city (the end of the line) without passing through Hungary. Between the wars, this made for only small difficulties, since both countries were independent and ‘democratic’, albeit with some serious problems with the democratic institutions. During the cold war period, these commuter trains had to pass through the Hungarian segment locked and sealed! Today, Sopron residents can work in Vienna just as well as those from Deutschkreuz can, and the commuter service serves them equally.
One of the main lines from Vienna to Bratislava (Pressburg in empire days) was truncated at the border during the cold war days. This is now the fast line to the Vienna airport and then a sleepy rural branch up to the border. Other lines between Vienna and Bratislava, such as the erstwhile KFN line through Deutsch Wagram, are now, largely, Viennese commuter routes, with some trains still serving Bratislava. Duplication of the KFN and StEG lines north/northeast of Vienna was resolved in favor of the StEG Südbahnhof and the Simmeringer Haupstrasse line, keeping Wien Nord for commuter/suburban trains.
Early in the Cold War period, the border crossing at Gmund on the erstwhile ÖNWB was (effectively) closed, and through trains from Vienna to Prague began running north on the erstwhile Kaiser Ferdinand’s Nordbahn, and then continuing through Brno (Brunn in empire days) and Kolin on the internal Czechoslovak main line between Bratislava and Prague that was developed into a main line only in the 1920s.
During the 2nd World War, Austria became part of Germany and the Austrian railway was absorbed into the German Railway. The main loco building works in Vienna, Floridsdorf, turned out many examples of the “Kriegslok”, the class 52 steam loco, which was the German standard freight loco during the war (over 6,000 built in 15 different locations). This was a medium size freight loco (2-10-0) with very light axle loading (15 tons) so it could go most places in Europe and was used for any type of train (not just freight). Some are preserved in Austria and run on the Austrian Railways from time-to-time. The class 44 that we saw in Salzburg is a very similar locomotive, built prior to the onset of full austerity in the Kriegslok locomotive design.
Post-1920 information on Hungarian Railways, Slovak Railways, Czech Railways and railways now in Poland is provided in the Eastern Europe trip report.
Today’s ÖBB operates a continuing wagonload freight network, much of it electrified at the ÖBB standard 15kV 16⅔ Hz. Freight trains in mountainous areas often have banking locomotives at the rear as well as the train locomotive(s) at the front end. Catenary is provided over every track in the freight yards. Locomotive depots, such as those at Saalfelden and Selzthal, have catenary even over the roundhouse turntable tracks. “Rolling Road” services, carrying complete freight-carrying road vehicles on flat cars and their drivers in a rider coach, are, or have been, provided on several routes, including the Brenner Pass and a route from Wels through Selzthal to Ljubljana in Slovenia.
InterCity (including EuroCity) passenger trains follow a basic hourly (sometimes two-hourly) regular interval pattern, all across the country. At hubs where trains from different lines meet, these trains are scheduled to provide cross-platform connections (or adjacent platform connections with more connecting time allowed), permitting a vast expansion of the number of station-pairs (“city”-pairs) provided with frequent, convenient travel options. Before arriving at these hub stations, in-train announcements identify which platforms are serving which destinations. Printed schedules distributed throughout each train also identify the connections of that specific train at the hubs along the way..
Many multiple-track Austrian main lines are signaled for bi-directional control, permitting flexible use of the tracks to permit a faster train to overtake a slower one between stations, as well as to meet opposing trains between stations.
Some route segments in Austria are part of the Pan-European Transport Corridors being funded by the European Union as an aid to the development of transportation infrastructure in central and eastern Europe: Breçlav (Czech Republic)–Vienna–Hegyeshalom (Hungary) is on Corridor IV; Salzburg–Villach–Jesenice (Slovenia), over the Tauern line, and Graz–Sentill (Slovenia) are on Corridor X.
ÖBB’s main-line services in 2005 are operated mainly by the following motive power (locomotives and railcars). All electric locomotives and railcars operate on the Austrian standard 15kV 16⅔ Hz, unless otherwise stated:
Class 1010/1110, built 1955-58, Co-Co wheel arrangement, 4 MW power, 130 km/h
Class 1012, introduced in 1995, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 6 MW power, 200 km/h
Class 1014, built 1993-4, operate on the Austrian standard 15 kV 16⅔ Hz and 25 kV 50Hz Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 3.4 MW power, 170 km/h maximum speed
Class 1016/1116 “Taurus” ‘universal locomotives’, introduced in 2002: 1016s operate on the Austrian standard 15 kV 16⅔ Hz, 1116s, additionally operate on 25 kV 50Hz. All are Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 6.4 MW power, 230 km/h maximum speed
Class 1216, to be introduced in 2005, adds operation on 3 kV DC and the possibility of 1.5 kV DC to the 1116’, but reduces capabilities to 6MW, 200 km/hr.
Class 1040, built 1950-52, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 2.34 MW power, 90 km/h
Class 1041, built 1952-54, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 2.36 MW power, 80 km/h
Class 1141, built 1954-57, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 2.48 MW power, 110 km/h
Class 1042, built 1963-67, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 3.56 MW power, 130 km/h
Class 1142, built 1963-67, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 4 MW power, 150 km/h
Class 1043, built 1971-73, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 3.6/4 MW power, 135 km/h
Class 1044, built 1971-73, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 6.3 MW power, 160/220 km/h
Class 2016, introduced 2002, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 2 MW power, 140km/h
Class 2043, built 1964-74, B-B wheel arrangement, 1.1 MW power, 110 km/h
Class 2143, built 1965-77, B-B wheel arrangement, 1.1 MW power, 100/110 km/h
Class 2048, built 1961, rebuilt 1991, B-B wheel arrangement, 840 kW power, 110 km/h
Class 2050, built 1958-62, Bo-Bo wheel arrangement, 1.05 MW power, 100 km/h
Class 4010, built 1965-78, 6-car unit, 2.5 MW total power, 150/160 km/h max. speed
Class 4020, built 1978-87, 3-car unit, 1.2 MW total power, 120 km/h maximum speed
Class 4023, introduced 2004, 3-car unit, 1.44 MW total power, 140 km/h max. speed
Class 4024, introduced 2004, 4-car unit, 1.52 MW total power, 140 km/h max. speed
Class 4030, built 1960-66, 3-car unit, 1 MW total power, 100 km/h max. speed
Class 5022, introduced 2001, 2-car unit, 630 kW total power, 120 km/h max. speed
Class 5047, built 1987-95, 1-car unit, 419 kW total power, 120 km/h max. speed
Class 5147, built 1992, half of 2-car unit, 419 kW total power, 120 km/h max. speed
Class 1099, built 1909-14, C-C wheel arrangement, 420 kW power, 50 km/h
Class 2095, built 1958-62, B-B wheel arrangement, 440 kW, 60 km/h max. speed
Graz is a regional capital (in addition to being administrative capital of the province of Styria), possessed of much of what passes for industry in 21st-century Austria, as well as a large, mainly technical, university. Its industry made it a target for bombing in the later years of WWII, so much of the building fabric is from the early post-war era. What exists of a historical nature is in the old center on the east bank of the river Mur (across the river from our hotel) and heading eastward from it, including the castle on a hill to the north of the old town. Even what remains does not seem to be particularly architecturally distinguished.
Apart from the tramway museum, there’s little in Graz of particular railway interest, either. The tramway system, which was developed in the 19th-century (starting in 1878) and electrified starting in 1899, currently has eight lines (1-7 and 14), with a total route length of 48.8 km. The tramway system grew until 1941, and shrank between 1955 and 1971, with a small addition in 1990 to reach its present route length. Waggonfabrik Weitzer Graz, a local company, built many of the early tramcars for the local tramway and others such as Innsbruck, while in Graz the tramway company itself built others.
We have only one night in Graz, so this morning we check out of the hotel and leave our baggage to be transferred by van to Vienna, before walking back over to Südtirolerplatz to wait for a vintage Graz tram to come by and pick us up. While we’re waiting there, an English-speaking guide from the Graz tourist board appears and spends much time talking to Werner. Eventually, our 1944-built tram appears, heading towards the station (and thus away from where we’re going), but we board it anyway and ride to the station, where we have an opportunity for pictures. We then ride back, past where we boarded and across the river into the center of Graz. We continue along on Graz line 1, turning south through the city center, then east at the main market square, and out to the northeast to the end of the line, which is where the carbarn is now occupied by the Graz tramway museum. Above this museum, on the wooded hillside, is the looming presence of the Mariatrost baroque basilica church.
The tramway museum started in 1971 and moved to the carbarn at the end of line 1 in 1980. A museum member who has knowledge of the trams as well as a certain command of English takes us around the museum, explaining the interpretive displays as well as describing the trams themselves. One of these trams is a former Third Street Railway tram from New York City, one of 44 sent over to Europe in the late 1940s as part of the Marshall Plan. Another is from Hall im Tirol, a suburb off Innsbruck whose tramway system closed some years ago. The museum has 17 tramcars (one a horse-drawn replica), 10 trailers, 4 freight wagons and 1 rectifier wagon in its collection. We also see the outdoor work area where volunteers are restoring trams. After this visit, the vintage tram takes us back into Graz, where Werner drops off for a moment to get us some informative material from an information booth in the marketplace, and then across the river and again to the station (after some hesitation at our original boarding location). Here, we leave the tram for a lunchtime break before boarding our train to Vienna. Chris and I, of course, only have tea and coffee.
The run from Graz to Vienna (Südbahnhof) over the original Südbahn main line is comparatively short on mileage, but long on railway importance, since it crosses the mountains from south to north on the famous Semmering Grade. The importance of the latter is not its mountain heights (it reaches only 1100 meters, or about 3600 ft., in elevation) but rather its early date (it was opened in 1848) for the level of civil engineering involved.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-17-05 |
ÖBB (OEC 556) |
1326 |
Graz-Vienna Südbahnhof |
EuroCity |
1116016-5 |
The first portion of the journey north from Graz is over the same line on which we arrived the day before. Just south of Brück an der Mur, the route to Vienna diverges from the route to Selzthal, and the northwest side of the triangle trails in from the west as the line continues northward. Brück an der Mur has four platforms serving six tracks curving through the station, with the station buildings on the west side. At Kapfenberg, a 760 mm line from Seebach-Turnau trails in from the west as the main line turns northeast. Climbing up the narrowing, steepening valley, the line passes through Kapfenberg Haltestelle, Marein-St. Lorenzen, Allerheiligen-Mürzhofen, and Kindberg. After a jog to the north, the line continues northeastward through Wartberg in Mürztal, Mitterdorf-Veitsch, Kreiglach, Langenwang and Hönigsberg. At Mürzzuschlag, a branch line from Neuberg Ort trails in from the northwest as the main line turns east.
Mürzzuschlag has three platforms serving five tracks, with the station buildings to the southeast. There is a steam locomotive (2-6-0T 91.32, built 1900) outside the former roundhouse facilities on the north side of the line, now a museum. North of Mürzzuschlag, as it passes through Spital am Semmering and Steinhaus, the line climbs up the north/northwest side of the valley (crossing over the autobahn). North of the station at Steinhaus, the line enters a tunnel and curves northward to reach the 1,100 meter elevation summit, at the east end of the tunnel, at the summit station of Semmering, The line turns west through a tunnel of medium length to Wolfsbergkogel, high above the west side of a valley to the east of the mountains. The descent towards the northeast is reasonably spectacular, particularly for an alignment built in 1848, with a number of viaducts (later replacements for the originals) and horseshoe curves along the way.
Wolfsbergel is followed by another tunnel and then a curve clockwise through another tunnel, exiting onto a viaduct that continues the curve, as the line descends steeply. After another clockwise curving viaduct, taking the line south of due eastward, a counter-clockwise-curving tunnel takes the line to Breitenstein, followed by more tunnels, and another viaduct, after which the line curves counter-clockwise, crosses a bridge and curves clockwise through a short tunnel, all high on the hillside. The line passes a castle and then through another short tunnel. A large autobahn viaduct is visible from Klamm-Schottwein. Passing through Eichberg, the line curves counter-clockwise and heads back to the west-northwest, still very high on the hillside, and then through more tunnels, The valley floor (in a side valley) is clearly visible as the line continues west-northwestward through Küb, followed by a long clockwise curve to reach Paterbach-Reichenau (where there is another stuffed-and-mounted steam locomotive, and another 760 mm gauge line comes in from the west), heading east. After passing through Schlögmühl, the final piece of the grade brings the line down onto the valley floor near Gloggnitz, where the line over the pass ends and high-speed running over the flat plains to the northeast resumes.
Once down to the valley floor at Gloggnitz, the course of the railway becomes quite pedestrian by comparison. Heading northeast, the line passes through Pottschach, Ternitz, Neunkirchen (Nieder Österreich), and St. Egyden. There is a big yard on the east side just south of Wiener Neustadt., with carriage sidings on the west side containing Vienna-area bi-level commuter trains with a large weasel logo on them. Approaching the station, lines trail in from Bad Fischau, to the west-northwest, and on the other side of the tracks, from Sopron in Hungary (to the southeast) and Friedberg to the south, separating a short distance southeast of the main line junction.
Wiener Neustadt station has six platforms serving eleven tracks with station buildings to the east. This is the outer terminus of the Vienna-area commuter runs, and there are several trains of double-deck stock in the platforms. As a line to Ebenfurth heads northeast, the main line turns north, through Wiener Neustadt Nord, Theresienfeld, Felixdorf, where a line northeast to Blumau-Neuriss trails in from the southeast, Sollenau, where a branch line towards Kledering leaves to the northeast, Leobersdorf, where a branch from Wittmansdorf trails in from the southwest, Kottingbrunn, and Bad Vösslau. The line turns north-northeast through Baden, Pfaffstetten, Gumpadskirchen, and Guntramsdorf Südbahn, and then turns north-northwest through Mödling, Brunn-Maria Enzersdorf, Perchtoldsdorf Haltestelle, Liesing, where the line turns north as a branch line from Waldmühle trails in from the southwest, and Atzgersdorf-Mauer, where the line turns northeast.
There are yards with many cement tanks in them on the east side of the line south of Hetzendorf. The line descends into a trench north of Hetzendorf, and then rises again as it approaches Wien (Vienna) Meidling, which is on the surface, albeit a bit below street level. West of Meidling, the belt line from Penzing and Hütteldorf on the Westbahn trails in from the west, while the connection off the southerly segment of the belt line, from Kledering, trails in from the southeast. (There is a connection between these two portions of the belt line, under which the main line passes while in the trench.) Meidling has four platforms serving eight tracks, just below street level but in the open. The Matzleinsdorf freight yard is to the north and rail-served industries to the south of the main line now headed east-northeast. The S-bahn line to Wien Mitte, served by trains from Hütteldorf, which separated from the main line east of Meidling and is now alongside to the north, has an island platform station at Matzleinsdorfer Platz before disappearing underground. There are carriage sidings and a locomotive depot on the south side, and the line reaches the upper-level west-facing platforms at Vienna Südbahnhof.
Our train today is ÖBB EC 556, Schauspielhaus Wien. At Mürzzuschlag, the last stop our train makes before reaching the summit of the Semmering grade, five members of our group depart, in the rain and clouds, to ride a slow train over the grade, in the hopes of getting better photographs (and the certainty of having openable windows to the rainy outdoors from which to take them).
The original intent of our itinerary had been for the group to exit the train at Vienna Meidling, the last stop before the Südbahnhof, and take a tram from there to our hotel in the center of Vienna, but Werner had been unable to get that hotel to send him our Vienna Cards ahead of time, requiring the purchase of tickets on the tram. Werner thus decided to go all the way to the Südbahnhof, walk out along the platform (19) to the stairs down to Südtirolerplatz (yes, another one, this one also outside the railway station that served the South Tirol), and take the U1 line of the U-Bahn (underground railway) from there to the Stephansplatz station, a short walk from our hotel. While it was still necessary to purchase 16 tickets, this could be done at a ticket office, not the entry door of a tramcar in the middle of the street. Some group members had difficulty keeping up on this walk.
The hotel on Neuer Markt borders on the pedestrian-only stretch of Kärntnerstrasse, only two blocks away from Stephansplatz, the center of Vienna. Those two blocks are the entirety of our walk from the U-bahn station (shorter than the distance from the tram stop at the Opera. that we would otherwise have arrived at). At the hotel, the keys are not immediately ready (soon remedied), and the luggage is not yet in or rooms (remedied more slowly). There are about three hours free before our group meal this evening, so Chris and I decide to start our exploration of the center of Vienna.
We walk back to Stephansplatz, and I show Chris St. Stephan’s Cathedral for the first time. We walk around the outside, and go inside far enough to purchase the guidebook in English, but there’s a Mass going on, so we can’t walk around the interior. We thus walk north to St. Peter’s church, where there also proves to be a Mass going on preventing our entry. It’s clear from perusal of the notices that we will have to come here earlier in the day (but after morning services) if we want to walk around the interior of these churches. Out in Graben, we inspect both of the brass sculptures, but the Fischer von Erlach plague memorial is shrouded in plastic for restoration. After walking around the streets within a block or two of Stephansplatz, it becomes clear that I need to peruse the guidebook to refresh my memory of exactly what we should go to, and where it is, before continuing our explorations of the city center. There should be time for this exploration after our excursions on Wednesday, so we repair to the hotel room (where our luggage has now been delivered) and I spend some time reading the relevant chapters of our guidebook to Vienna before it is time to gather for dinner.
Werner explains that our dinner will, in fact, be at another hotel owned by the same company, two blocks away down Kärntnerstrasse. When we get there, “little Bob” is missing. Werner explains that the hotel is giving us free drinks to compensate for the baggage not being in our rooms, and tries to get the waiters to serve apple juice to Chris and me instead of the wine. Chris also asks for “just plain water” for our drinks with dinner, and while this shows up, the apple juice never does. Werner goes back to the hotel and rouses “little Bob”, who had fallen asleep in his room and appears at dinner with a sheepish look on his face.
Werner tells the group that he has arranged with the hotel for breakfast to start early at 6 am, due to our early start in the morning, and for the hotel to provide box lunches since there will be no opportunity for a stop during the day. After dinner, we walk back to the hotel along Kärntnerstrasse, still filled with a mass of people and go to bed with the hubbub arising from that street five floors below quite noticeable in our room. (We have the windows wide open to cool the room down to something approaching our normal sleeping temperature.)
Vienna is the capital of present-day Austria. Vienna was once the imperial capital of the Habsburg Empire. Those statements, taken together, say a lot about the Vienna of the early 21st-century, because while the city’s population is increasing slowly in 2005, it is actually smaller than it was when the empire collapsed in 1918. This contributes a lot to the city’s ambience and sense of scale.
The old city center, inside the Ringstrasse boulevard built when the old city walls were demolished in the third quarter of the 19th-century, is still largely laid out as it was in Mozart’s day, although many of the buildings are clearly post-war reconstructions of or replacements for buildings damaged or destroyed in WWII. There are one or two outstanding new buildings, such as the one facing St. Stephan’s cathedral. Access to the old city has been enhanced by the subway lines built in the 1970s, since none of the tramlines of the late 19th and early 20th-century penetrated the streets within the enveloping bounds of the Ringstrasse and the quays along the arm of the Danube that penetrates the city.
Vienna has the second largest tramway system in the world, second only to that in St. Petersburg, the opposing imperial capital for so many years. Because we traveled on Vienna’s trams in both our May and June visits to the city in 2005, discussion of the Viennese tramway system is elaborated further in the report on the Eastern Europe trip.
The essence of the imperial capital’s architecture is captured in its churches and its palaces, although we chose to visit only the exteriors of the latter.
St. Stephan’s cathedral dominates the pedestrian area in the center of the city. It is oriented towards the point on the southeast horizon at which the sun rises on the winter solstice. The earliest still extant part of the cathedral—the northwest front and its adjoining “pagan” towers—dates from the Late Romanesque period between 1230 and 1245. The bright Gothic triple-apsed choir was begun in 1304 and dedicated in 1340, the spire of the tall south tower was completed in 1433 and the nave in 1474. Construction on the north tower was suspended in 1511, leaving that tower a stump without ornamentation or spire; its onion-domed cupola was added in 1578. Much baroque decoration was added to the cathedral between 1647 and 1677. There are still cannonballs embedded in the masonry from the Turkish siege of 1683. Almost 45% of the building’s substance was destroyed in April 1945, but the nave was rebuilt by December 1948, and rebuilding was complete by April 1952.
The cathedral is 107.2 meters long, 34.2 m. wide, 22.4 m. high in the central choir, 28 m. high in the central nave. The crest of the choir roof is 46.7 m., the crest of the nave roof is 59.9 meters and the south tower 136.4 meters, high enough to be seen from many locations around the center of the city and beyond. The north and south towers are at the juncture between nave and choir. The exterior of the roof is decorated with a chevron pattern created by multi-colored tiles. There are baroque side chapels on the sides of the nave, and many small altars distributed around the interior. The early baroque high altar was executed by Johann Jakob Pock and Tobias Pock of Constance and consecrated in 1647. All of the pillars in the nave and choir have two or three sculptures of saints mounted on them, most of them created between 1446 and 1465. Set-pieces such as the organ base and “Pilgram pulpit’ were executed under the direction of Anton Pilgram in 1513-14.
St. Peter am Graben is Vienna’s oldest church, located at the northwest corner of the long-gone roman walls of the old city. The current late baroque structure, designed by Lukas von Hillenbrand, was completed and consecrated in 1733. Behind the west portico and its adjoining pair of towers, the vast majority of the church comprises a large elliptical room over which a cupola is located. Only the high altar and its adjoining sacristies extend beyond the east end of the ellipse. There are altarpieces, some in side chapels, arrayed around the sides of the ellipse. The interior of the cupola is a fresco painted by Johann Michael Rottmayr. The church is 47.5 meters long, 26.8 m. wide, and the cupola is 56.8 m. high. Andrea Altomonte created the rococo front portal in 1751-1753.
St. Charles Borromeo (the Karlskirche on Karlsplatz) is another baroque church based on a large elliptical main space with a cupola above it, and containing frescos by Johann Michael Rottmayr, painted between 1725 and 1730, on the ceiling inside the cupola. Architected by Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach, and built starting in 1715, the church has a broad façade with a Greek-columned portico flanked by a pair of towers that are not much higher than the façade and a pair of columns adorned with stuccoed figures, that are quite a bit taller (47 m. high) than the towers, but not as high as the dome (the base of which is at 45 m. and the top at 72 m.). The main altar, also by Fischer von Eerlach, is in the choir, a space off the far end of the ellipse from the portico, and depicts St. Charles Borromeo floating upward on a spiral of cloud. There are altar alcoves, with paintings, along the church walls on both sides of the ellipse. This is a building in which the whole is truly greater even than the sum of its magnificent parts.
The Hofburg (imperial palace complex) and its grounds (including the gardens on either side where the bastions once were) occupy about a quarter of the total circumference of the Ringstrasse (not including the Kais), at the southwestern extremity of the space within the boulevard (and thus within the later version of the city walls). The complex of palaces has 18 wings, 54 staircases, 19 courtyards and about 2,600 rooms. The sprawling construction, in diverse architectural styles dating from as early as the 1430s, stems from a tradition that no emperor lived in the rooms inhabited by his predecessor.
The complex includes: the Heldenplatz (Heroes Square), where the fortress used to be until destroyed by Napoleonic forces in 1809; the Neue Hofburg, surrounding the square architected by Gottfried Semper in 1879, with construction continuing until 1908; the Schweizerhof, oldest part of the current building complex (dating from the 15th and 16th-centuries), located behind the Schweizertor; the Imperial Chancellery, dating from 1723-30, and designed in part by Josef Emanuel Fischer von Erlach (son of Johann Bernard); the Amalienburg, dating from 1575 and named in the early 18th-century; the Leopoldine Wing, erected in 1660-66; St. Michael’s Wing and Square, the means of entry to the complex from the inner city rather than the Ringstrasse, built in 1893; St. Michael’s Church (across the street from the St. Michael’s entrance arch), whose present building dates from 1792; the Stables, dating from 1558; the Spanish Riding School, built by the younger Fischer von Erlach in 1735; and Josefsplatz, the square to the southeast of the stables and Spanish Riding School, leading to the National Library.
The Upper and Lower Belvedere palaces occupy a large irregular pentagonal plot of land to the south-southeast of the city, lying between Rennweg and then the side street Jaquingasse to the east, Prinz Eugen Strasse to the west, Schwarzenberg Platz to the north (with the northwest corner near the rear of the Karlskirche) and the Gürtel to the south (with the southwest corner lying catercorner from the Südbahnhof), rising from north to south. Dominique Girard, of Bavaria, laid out the magnificent garden while Johann Lucas von Hildebrant designed the two palaces. The whole was completed in 1725. The Upper Belvedere was used for entertainments, while the Lower was Prinz Eugen’s residence. The complex became Habsburg property on Prinz Eugen’s death in 1736.
We visit Schönbrunn only in June, so it is covered in the report on Eastern Europe.
This will be our last day of excursions to narrow gauge railways up into the mountains. We have to leave so early in the morning, because there is only one train we can take down the Ybbstal line to complete our bus-assisted round trip into the north edge of the mountains. As a compensating factor, we will be back in Vienna in mid afternoon, with plenty of time to continue our explorations of the inner city.
When Chris and I descend to the lobby a little after 6 am, with day bags in hand ready to leave at the appointed 6:45 am, Werner is at the front desk arguing volubly with the desk clerk. It is clear from his manner and tone that he is seriously angry about something, and that we wouldn’t care to be on the receiving end of his arguments. When I acquire about the whereabouts of breakfast, he says that it would be in the restaurant beyond the bar, but it is not ready yet! When we walk in there, all that is available is the small amount of rolls and coffee (and hot water) on the bar, for those who have to leave between five and seven. Since we have to leave before seven, we tuck into this, ignoring the plaints of “this is not for you” from the small number of staff currently present. About 6:20 am, other staff members appear and begin putting out the cold parts of the normal breakfast buffet, but none of us will get a hot breakfast this morning.
The box lunches are also not ready, and some of the staff scurries around making them up for us. Werner hand delivers the lunches to the group members, pair by pair, as they are completed. Apparently the combination of the refusal to send us the Vienna Cards ahead of time, the failure to have the luggage in the rooms when we arrived, and these two failures to carry out an agreement made the day before, have led Werner to say that none of his groups will ever use this hotel again! (Chris and I are staying at a different hotel on our second visit to Vienna in June.)
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-18-05 |
ÖBB (IC 690) |
0734 |
Vienna Westbahnhof–St. Polten |
ÖBB single-level |
1116 |
|
5-18-05 |
ÖBB (E 6837) |
0824 |
St. Polten - Mariazell |
Vintage 4-wheel |
1099 |
|
5-18-05 |
ÖBB (R 6906) |
1154 |
Lust-am-see-Waidhofen |
Vintage 4-wheel |
2095007-7 |
|
5-18-05 |
ÖBB (R 3525) |
1331 |
Waidhofen-Amstetten |
ÖBB “City Shuttle” |
1142 |
|
5-18-05 |
ÖBB (IC 643) |
1409 |
Amstetten-Vienna Wbf. |
ÖBB EuroCity |
1044035-2 |
Eventually, everyone has a box lunch and has had at least some sort of breakfast (including Werner), and the group departs at the appointed time for the Westbahnhof. We get there by walking back to the Stephansplatz U-bahn station (which we notice has no descending escalator from street level), and take line U-3 out towards Ottakring for the five stops out to the Westbahnhof.
The Route Description for the Vienna to St. Polten segment is provided under the Vienna-Munich trip on Friday, May 20th.
From the Westbahnhof, we take an early morning train in the steady rain, out through Hütteldorf to St. Polten. Just east of the latter there is much earthwork and trackwork, and it is clear that two extra tracks are being added on the south side of the line into the station, and that a burrowing junction with the local line that reaches here from Vienna along the south bank of the Danube is being constructed. The construction results in us being about four minutes late into St. Polten, which results in us being four minutes late boarding the connecting electrically-operated narrow gauge train on the Mariazellerbahn on the southwest corner of the station, much to the displeasure of the conductor on that train.
The line is single-track, 760 mm gauge (just about 30 inches). The line was electrified in 1909-1914 at 6500V AC single-phase, in one of the earliest electrification schemes in Austria. The class 1099 electric locomotives date from 1909-1914, when the line was initially electrified (and its characteristic articulated-tender steam locomotives transferred to the narrow-gauge lines near Gmund on the Czech border). There is an hourly service on the line, with two-hourly service all the way to Mariazell. At first, the line runs through flatlands, and then wooded hills south of Klangen, and then along the west side of a wooded valley south of Rabenstein.
The line runs in tunnel right after turning south at the end of the St. Polten platforms. St. Polten Alpen.has two platforms serving three tracks, with station buildings to the west and carriage and loco yards to the east. The Mariazell line turns southwest as a non-electrified line continues south to Traisen and beyond. The Mariazell line passes through Porschestrasse, Schwadorf, turns west through Völlerndorf and then south. At Ober Grafendorf, 12 km from St. Polten, there are connections with diesel railcars on the line to Wieselburg. Trains from Wieselburg connect with Mariazellerbahn trains in both directions. Ober Grafendorf has low-level platforms serving three tracks, with station buildings to the east. Klangen has low-level platforms with station buildings to the east.
Winburg has a low-level platform to the west. At Kammerhof, the line turns southwest. Hofstetten-Grünau has low-level platforms with station buildings to the east. The line turns south, west and then south again through Mainburg, then turns southwest. Rabenstein NÖ has low-level platforms with station buildings to the east. Running south, the line passes through Steinklamm and Tradgist, where it turns southwest again. Kirchberg an der Pielach has station buildings to the west and other tracks to the east. The line is now climbing, but the valley floor has risen up to meet it, running west through Schwerbach and then southwest again. Loich has station buildings to the west.
A tunnel precedes Schwarzbach an der Pielach, which has station buildings to the east, as does Frankenfels, where the line turns south through Boding. Laubenbachmühle has station buildings to the west and a passing track to the east, followed by a tunnel and a bridge over the river. At Unter Buchberg, the line makes a clockwise horseshoe curve to head back north on the west side of the same valley, and then makes an anti-clockwise semi-circle to head back south in a different valley. Winterbach(A) has station buildings to the west. The line crosses a side valley on a curving viaduct. Puchenstuben has station buildings to the west.. The line crosses another viaduct, and passes through a short tunnel and then a long tunnel.
Gösing has station buildings to the east. The line is now on the east wall of a valley, and is descending as it turns east for a short distance and then south again. Annaberg(A) has station buildings to the east. The line now runs along the west side of a broader valley. After a tunnel, Wienerbruck-Josefsberg has station buildings to the east, and is followed by two tunnels, a viaduct, another tunnel, viaducts, and another tunnel. Erlaufklause has station buildings to the east.. The line again turns east and then south. Mitterbach has station buildings to the west. The line is now heading south on the valley floor. Mariazell has station buildings to the west and a yard to the east. Also adjacent to the east are the standard gauge tracks of a museum.
Settling into the vintage narrow gauge car at the rear of that train, we discover that the underseat heating is on at full boil, and that we need to open the windows to prevent them from steaming up and blocking the view. Eventually, Werner turns off the heat to solve both problems, but before we get to Mariazell someone in the group has turned the heating back on. Fortunately, contrary to Bob Miller’s expectations, there is actually a toilet on this train that we will be on for two and a half hours.
Along the way, after we get into the mountains and the rain has subsided somewhat, there is a clockwise horseshoe curve that permits us to photograph the front of the train from the open windows of our car at the rear end. This is a good thing, as the lateness of this train means that the transfer to our bus at Mariazell must be expedited if we are to be sure of catching our next train at the other end of the bus ride. At Mariazell, we see the yard and track of the standard gauge railway museum there, but no trains on the segment of line from station to lake (Alofsee) that we follow along the road to our next destination. The road crosses over a pass at an elevation of a little over 4000 ft. (about the same as at home), and amazingly also crosses over the state line from Lower Austria into Styria, the province of which Graz is capital, which I had thought of as being much further south, and of being on the south side of the Danube/Adriatic watershed. Perhaps on this drive we are on the south side of that watershed for a short distance. Baron Rothschild owns much of the land in this area, which was/is used as a hunting park.
The Ybbstal narrow gauge line runs 54 km from Lunz am See to Waidhofen, and was built in the 1890s. It used to run another 24 km beyond Lunz am See, but that segment was closed in the 1980s and has since been operated by a preservation society using steam locomotion. The line has no electrification, and so is operated by a narrow gauge diesel locomotive (class 2095, built in 1962) hauling vintage cars. The service on the upper part of the line operates only twice a day, although service is more frequent in the lower valley where the population density is higher. The line descends the valley of a north-flowing river, even if for quite a distance it is actually heading west and even south of west. The steepest grade on the currently-operated line is only 1%, because the line follows the course of the Ybbs all the way to the line’s other terminus at Waidhofen. The closed segment beyond Lunz am See had grades of over 3%. Freight on this line uses narrow gauge wagons that have to be transloaded at Waidhofen, unlike several other narrow gauge lines in Austria (Zillertalbahn, the line west out of Zell am See, Mariazellerbahn) that use transporters for standard gauge cars.
The line starts out on the east side of the Ybbs river valley, amid fir-covered hillsides. Lunz am See has a single platform with station buildings to the northwest side of the line, which is heading south-southwest at this point, through Kasten, and turning southwest through Steigengraben-Ybbstalerschütte and Göstling an der Ybbs, which has a single platform with station buildings to the “west” side of the line. The line turns north, northeast, northwest through Kogelsbach and then west. St. Georg am Reith has station buildings to the north. The line heads west-southwest, through Obereinöd. Konigsberg has only a platform. The line continues west-southwest through Blamau and Oisberg.
At Grosshollenstein, which has station buildings to the west, the line turns northwest. Kleinhollenstein has station buildings to the west, after which the line turns northeast and passes through a tunnel, after which the river is on the east side of the line, which passes through Hohenlehen and Seeburg.. Opponitz has station buildings to the east. The line crosses the river to its east side and turns north, passing through Mirenau and Gaissulz. At Schütt, a branch comes in from Ybbsitz, to the east and the line turns west. Gstadt(A) has station buildings to the north. Kreilhof has a shed on the north side. The line turns northwest. Vogelsang(A) has a shed on the southwest side. Waidhofen an der Ybbs Lokalbahn has a shed to the southwest. Waidhofen an der Ybbs Schillerpark has a shed to the northeast. The line crosses a viaduct above the town and comes along the east side the standard gauge line coming in from the south. Waidhofen an der Ybbs has a shed on the west side, and is on the east side of the station buildings for the standard gauge line (the opposite side from the standard gauge tracks).
Once settled into these cars (we have no fellow passengers until schoolchildren board, well down the valley), we eat our box lunches and watch the interesting mountain and river scenery. This time, the photographers have been able to get pictures of the locomotive before we left the starting point, which is good since once again the train is late at the connecting point and appears to have eaten up the entire connection allowance.
However, there is actually time at Waidhofen an der Ybbs for some of us to purchase Ybbstalbahn souvenirs before our also-late connecting train appears, and we board it. This train is also carrying schoolchildren homeward, and it is so full that many of us take the tip-up seats in the space at the front of the train that is supposed to be used for wheelchairs, etc. As this is only a short ride, the inconvenience is tolerable and no wheelchair users or parents with baby carriages appear to disturb us.
This line is the one coming north in the Enns valley from Selzthal, and is a single-track electrically-operated line. Waidhofen an der Ybbs has two low-level platforms with the station buildings to the east. Heading north-northwest, the line descends a broad valley leading to the Danube, with farmland on the valley floor. Böhlerwerk an der Ybbs has a station buildings on the east side, as do Sonntagberg and Rosenau(A), where the line turns northeast. Hilm-Kematen has station buildings to the west. Kröllendorf has a shed to the west, as the line turns north-northeast. Ulmerfeld-Hausnovy has station buildings to the east and multiple tracks. A line curves off to the west to join the southwest-heading main line. Greinsfurth has station buildings to the east. Just north of Greinsfurth, the branch line turns northeast and runs along the south side of the main line for a mile or two, with both lines turning east before the branch reaches its bay on the southwest side of Amstetten station.
Our connecting EuroCity train is ten minutes late, and a local train to the Westbahnhof, normally behind it, will arrive first. Werner asks if anyone wants to get on this train, but since our intended train will likely pass it before reaching Vienna, we demur. When the local train arrives, it is hauled by the only remaining class 1042 that still has the original corner windows on the cab (all the others have been modified with corner posts instead). Werner says that the director of the Selzthal museum has asked for this locomotive to be added to his collection while it is still in this condition, so far without success.
The Route Description for the Amstetten to St. Polten segment is provided under the Vienna-Munich trip on Friday, May 20th.
Our train is only ten minutes late, as promised, and whisks us back to Vienna, stopping only at St. Polten. Along the way to that stop, I observe that we seem to be running on a section of high-speed line (that I later find out was built in 1994-95), again with those semi-circular arc tunnels, and that the original main line diverges to the north on a viaduct just before we enter one of those tunnels, west of Melk. The huge abbey at Melk, so prominent from that original main line, is not visible from the line we actually travel along. Before St. Polten, we are checked by signals behind the slow train that left Amstetten ahead of us, although scheduled behind us. Approaching the Westbahnhof, we are again stopped by signals in the station throat (adjacent to the signal box).
Back in Vienna, we return to the hotel on the U-bahn, drop of some of our bags, and prepare to explore more of the inner city.
We walk back to St. Stephan’s, and this time we’re able to explore its interior. Leaving by the side door, we walk to the west side of the church and inspect the area where the guide book says the house Mozart lived in when he wrote, among other things, The Marriage of Figaro is located. We find plaques listing Mozart Prize winners, but no identified house. (It may have been in an adjacent courtyard that I had visited with John Worden in December, 1994.) We then walk north to St. Peter’s, and are able to visit its interior, also. On leaving this church, we head to the north end of Graben, and turn west onto Hohe Markt, walking a couple of blocks down that street before I ask Chris if she would like an afternoon cup of tea. When she looks puzzled at the question, I point out that we are standing right outside Demel, the most famous pastry-house in Vienna (famous for more than just one torte, that is). We each have a delicious piece of a layered chocolate torte, along with Chris’ tea and my coffee.
Back outside, I point out that we’re standing directly east of the east entrance to the Hofburg. We examine the plaza on the east side, the gate itself (passing through it), the courtyard within, the gate on the west side and the area between it and the Ringstrasse, the courtyard and church front to the south, and the outside of the Winter Riding School and the under-renovation courtyard where the Lippizaner stallions practice their routines. We then walk south along the east side of the palace to the rear corner of the opera, where we stop to look at the Viennese ‘Holocaust Memorial’, a three piece sculpture not installed until the mid 1990s, and then pass across the front of the Hotel Sacher, home of the Sachertorte, noting its café inside. We walk around the outside of the State Opera House, cross the Opernring and walk past the front of the Musikverein.
Then, we cross the street and walk past the Karlsplatz pool to the front of the Karlskirche. Walking then to the entrance on the right side, we discover that the church closes to visitors at 6:00 pm, and it’s now 5:50 pm. I had thought this might happen when we stopped at Demel, but it appears we will have time on Thursday to visit the church a little earlier in the afternoon. We walk back past the 1898 Otto Wagner art deco entrances to the original Karlspatz ‘subway’ station (on a tram line lowered one floor below street level), crossing the street by means of the underground passageway, and then doing that again at the Oper station to cross the Ringstrasse into Kärntnerstrasse, whence we return to the hotel.
Later, we walk back down Kärntnerstrasse to a sausage stand near the opera, where we purchase bratwurst in bread rolls and apfelsaft (apple juice) as all we need for our evening meal on a day when we had been provided with lunch.
Today we have a combination tour of Vienna and tram tour, followed by a visit to the Vienna Tramway Museum. The tour will start from adjacent to the carbarn where a vintage tram is stored (not the museum), so we must first get out there. After breakfast, we walk down to the Stephansplatz U-bahn station, take line U-3 for two stops to Wien Mitte/Landstrasse, and change to U-4 which heads out along a one-time tram subway route that has Otto Wagner-designed art deco stations, running only one level down from the streets, up the southwest side of the course of the Wien River, past Schönbrunn Palace to Hietzing (whence the line continues to Hütteldorf). At Hietzing, we come up to the surface and wait for an onwards tram, taking Line 60 onwards in a southwesterly direction to its intersection with Line 62, where we get off the tram.
At this point, there is a misunderstanding among Werner, our Vienna tour guide, and the operators of the vintage tramcar. The latter is located one tram stop east on Line 62 (waking distance for most of us), and the Vienna tour guide has already arrived there and met the volunteer crew of the vintage tram. She speaks with Werner on the ‘phone, and then walks up to where we are several minutes later. Awhile later, Werner has us all move to a tram stop on Line 62, in the middle of the adjacent street. At this point, several of us cross to a nearby café to use its toilet facilities (and one of us buys some coffee in return).
When the vintage tram still does not come, the tour guide walks back to where it is, and on return informs us that we will have to walk to it, since if it turns westward to come to us it cannot turn around to go in the desired direction after we board. (The layout of the tracks may not permit it to turn west, anyway.) Once we’re all on the tram, it pulls out of the side street it has been waiting on for an hour or so (since before we got off the line 60 tram), and turns east onto Hetzendorferstrasse. The tram turns left (north) onto Breitenfürterstrasse, still on line 62, coming alongside the railway line we had used to come into Vienna on Tuesday and crossing that line just west of Vienna Meidling station onto Eichenstrasse. (At this point, we see a tram headed for Baden on the Wienlokalbahn, which uses these same tram tracks in this area.)
Our tram turns left onto Aramaystrasse after passing Meidling station, and then right onto Flurschützstrasse to reach the Gürtel, where we turn east (right) and descend into the remaining segment of the tramway tunnels, passing through Eichenstrasse and Matzleindorfer Platz, stations, straight ahead at the ‘wye’, through Kliebergasse station, turn left at the junction, Laurenzgasse station and coming back up from the tunnels at Wiedner Haupstrasse. We turn right onto Karlsplatz on lines 62 and 65, pass the art nouveau subway entrances above the Karlsplatz station, turn left onto Akademiestrasse, left onto the outer edge of the Ringstrasse (Karntner Ring), left again onto Karntnerstrasse, and left onto Bösendorfer Strasse. We again turn left onto Akademiestrasse, but on a different track from before and then turn onto the Ringstrasse’s main tramway line in a clockwise direction at the west end of the KarntnerRing.
Our tram then proceeds all the way around to the northeast corner of the Ringstrasse, with the tour guide describing the sights we see along the way. We pass several hotels, the State Opera House (near our hotel) on the Opernring, the Burgring past the Hofburg on the right and museums on the left, all on route 1. At this point, the righthand outside mirror on a tour bus hits the left turn indicator on our tram, knocking it off. The drivers exchange information, and we continue after picking up the device from the street.
We continue along line 1 on Dr. Karl Renner Ring, past the the Austrian Parliament on the left, and straight ahead onto Dr. Karl Lueger Ring, with the Rathaus (town hall) on the left and the Burgtheater and Café Landtmann (where we will eat tonight) on the right, the University to the left and the Votivkirche across the square to the left beyond Schottentor station, and then angling right onto the Schottenring past the stock exchange building to the right. At the northernmost corner, we turn southeast along Franz-Josefs Kai on the west side of the Donau Kanal (or perhaps it should now be called “Little Danube” as an English translation of its newer German name). All the buildings on the far side of the waterway were destroyed in the climactic battle between the Soviet and German forces in 1945. We pass a 13th-century Romanesque church on the right, passing some more fancy hotels as the Kai turns eastward, and then continue ahead on Uranianstrasse at the point where the Stubenring, the eastern end of the Rongstrasse, heads off to the south (right).
We cross the outlet of the River Wien (which runs down alongside subway line U-4 from Hütteldorf, passing in a covered culvert under the city market and then turning to pass south of the city center past the Stadtpark), which is very high on this day. Continuing ahead onto Radetzkystrasse (cue the Radetzky March and we’ll all clap rhythmically), we later turn right onto Hinter Zollamtstrasse and then Invalidenstraase, and then left onto Ungargasse.
At this point, we execute a little used left turn requiring manual operations of the controls, and using a very bad track connection, to get onto Rennweg heading south-southeast on line 71 outward from the city center, continuing this until we have to execute a series of right hand turns around a transportation center next to the St Marxx Cemetery in which Mozart is buried, turning right onto Grasbergengasse, right on Leberstraase past St. Marxx station, and right again onto Landstrasse-Hauptstrasse to cross Rennweg. We continue on Schlachthausgasse (slaughterhouse way), turn right onto Merkkelsgasse, and left onto Würzlerstrasse, crossing Schlachthausgasse, and left onto Erdberggasse to the back of the Vienna Tramway Museum, which we enter by passing through one of its car barns.
This is one of the most comprehensive museums of this type that I have seen, apparently having at least one example of every tram that has run in Vienna, at least since the tramways were electrified. The museum director gives us a very comprehensive tour of the contents of three large carbarns, including the one we had come in through. In the course of the tour we see another of the former New York Third Street Electric streetcars that had come to Austria as part of the Marshall Plan. At the end, we have an opportunity to purchase books (in German) and souvenirs before leaving.
We head back towards the Gürtel by a different route from that we had used coming out onto Schlachthausgasse, continuing onto Landstrasse-Hauptstrasse, crossing Rennweg and later turning left onto Landstrasser Gürtel at Wildgansplatz, past Schweinergarten and the Südbahnhof (both on our left) and dropping down into the tramway tunnel at Südtirolerplatz., passing through Bieselrtumgassse station and then through the junction to Kliebergasse station to pass through the same tramway tunnel stations and junctions that we had used coming out, and returning to the vintage tram’s home by the same route past Meidling station. We see that there is considerable construction on the railway on the out-of-town side of Meidling station. Leaving the vintage tram, we use Line 62 for one stop to Hofwiesengasse, and then Line 60 back to Hietzing, whence we take Line 58 past the front of Schönbrunn (where it makes a left turn) and the Technical Museum to the tram station at the Westbahonhof.
Here, Werner takes some people to make train arrangements for after the tour ends the next morning, while Chris and I purchase a comprehensive tramway map at the city transit information booth in the U-Bahn station. We exit that station on Mariahilferstrasse, heading for the inner city, to follow Werner’s instructions for finding a pet shop where we might buy an exotic (for the US) cat toy for Chessie. We think we follow those instructions, but don’t find such a shop. From the back end of the arcade we followed, we drop down to the street along the left side of the marketplace on the covered-over stretch of the Wien River, and then walk along that street towards town. (Had we realized that the U-Bahn Line U-2 was just across the market, we would have used it.)
Arriving at the far west edge of Karlsplatz, we make our way across the street and the gardens to Karlskirche, which we can now visit. The church is under renovations, making some views of the interior difficult, but in compensation we can take an elevator up six floors to a platform from which we get close up views of the frescoes inside the church’s magnificent dome. On leaving the church some time later, we walk back across the gardens, using the subway passages to cross the streets back over towards our hotel, stopping on the way to get some coffee and apple juice. Back in the hotel, I finish reading the guidebook, and use the ÖBB Timetable that Werner had helped us acquire in Graz, to plan a train trip out to Eisenstadt for Friday (on our own, since the tour finishes with dinner tonight and the included breakfast in the morning).
At the appointed time, we all gather in the hotel lobby for one last group event—tonight’s dinner. We walk down the street to the tram stop in front of the Opera House, and take a tram clockwise (Line 1) along the Ringstrasse to Café Landtmann. The latter is a magnificent old restaurant, lavishly appointed on the inside, in which our reserved tables are at the farthest point in a series of connecting rooms. Dinner is magnificent, finishing with the Café’s version of Sachertorte (which they claim is better than that currently served by Hotel Sacher). When everyone is finished, we go outside into the balmy moonlit night, crossing the Ringstrasse to take an anti-clockwise tram (Line 2) back to the stop across from the Opera House, whence we walk contentedly, but a bit wistfully at the end of the group tour, back to the hotel for our last night in Austria (this trip).
We say our goodbyes on the way back to the hotel, since we’re not sure whom we will see at breakfast in the morning. At least some people have early morning flights or trains out of Vienna.
During the tram tour on Thursday, the guide pointed out houses where Mozart, Haydn (in the last years of his life), Beethoven and Schubert had lived, and told a story about Haydn’s body and head after his death, all being eventually reunited in a church in Eisenstadt. This made me wonder if we could get out to Eisenstadt during the time available on Friday before we had to take our luggage to the Westbahnhof for our train back to Munich. The timetable shows this to be possible if we take the 9:15 am direct train from the Südbahnhof, giving us a couple of hours in Eisenstadt and allowing time for us to walk back from the Südbahnhof through the Belvedere Gardens afterwards.
We see several other group members for one last time at breakfast. After breakfast, we check out and leave the bags with the bell captain. We walk to the Stephansplatz U-Bahn station and take line U-1 to Südtirolerplatz. We initially leave this station by the wrong exit, but soon get turned the right way and walk to the main frontage of the Südbahnhof, where we had arrived on Tuesday afternoon. This post-WWII concrete box station has a single rectangular concourse with two sets of mainline platforms, at different levels, at an angle greater than a right angle to one another. The platforms of the original Südbahn, numbers 11-19, at which we had arrived on Tuesday, are one level up from street level, accessed by escalators, and are oriented generally westward, past Südtirolerplatz and along the main street (the Gürtel) outside the front of the station until that street turns away curving around to the northwest and the north to circle the city, while the tracks continue westward to Meidling.
The other set of mainline platforms, numbers 1-9, is that of the original Staatseisenbahn Gesellschaft (StEG), colloquially known as the Ostbahn, most of whose trackage found itself in Hungary, newly become a separate country, after 1919. The few remaining domestic services from this set of platforms, signed Südbahnhof (Ost) go to places in Burgenland, (which was once, indeed, part of Hungary), and to suburban locations much nearer Vienna as intermediate stops. (Airport Services, which head out in this same direction, run from other platforms in a different direction off the concourse (numbers 21-22), as do the S-Bahn services.)
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-20-05 |
ÖBB (E 2699) |
0916 |
Vienna Südbahnhof (Ost)-Eisenstadt |
ÖBB single-level |
2050.002 |
|
5-20-05 |
GySEV |
1221 |
Eisenstadt to Neusiedl-am-See |
GySEV railcar |
(diesel rc) |
|
5-20-05 |
ÖBB (E 2622) |
1300 |
Neusiedl-am-See to Vienna Sbf |
ÖBB single-level |
1014015-0 |
The line out of the Südbahnhof (Ost) heads southeast There are carriage and locomotive sidings on the west side of the line just out of the station. There are more carriage sidings on the east side of the line, further south. The line to Simmeringer Haupstrasse and many places beyond on the old StEG lines to Bratislava and Brno curves away to the east-southeast, there is a station at Simmering Ostbahn, and the south side of the wye from the Simmeringer Haupstrasse line trails in from the north. On the west is a yard named Wien Zentralverschiebebahnhof. The massive Kledering marshaling yard,, with its comprehensive freight locomotive stabling facilities and automated hump marshaling facilities, is on the east side of the tracks from this point and for several kilometers south. This relatively new yard (opened in 1986) replaces a number of older yards dotted around the Vienna area, and takes trains from Eastern Europe and re-marshals them for destinations in Western Europe (via the Westbahn main line to Germany as well as down the Südbahn to Italy), and vice versa for trains destined for Eastern Europe. The fall of the “iron curtain” and the accession of Hungary and Slovakia (as well as the Czech Republic and Poland) to the European Union have vastly increased the level of traffic passing through this yard, and thus these processes, in both directions.
In the vicinity of Kledering (south of some of the yard facilities, and north of others), the loop line around the southwest of the city from Penzing crosses above the Ostbahn line, heading for the line to the airport that formerly went to Bratislava. The loop line has connections to the Ostbahn lines away from the city that permit traffic from the Ostbahn (and Kledering Yard) to head both ways on the loop line, as well as a loop, departing to the east south of Kledering station, that permits traffic to head north onto the Simmeringer Haupstrasse line and then for Bratislava or Brno.
At that same junction south of Kledering station, a non-electrified line heads southwest, eventually reaching Sollendorf on the Wiener Neustadt line (Südbahn). The Ostbahn curves south, through Lanzendorf-Rannersdorf, and then southeast again through Himberg and Gutenhof-Velm. Granesneusiedl has three platforms serving five tracks, with station buildings to the west and a yard to the east. Here, a line heads southwest to Ebenfurth and the Ostbahn turns east, through Götzendorf, where branch lines head north to the vicinity of the airport and south to Mannersdorf, both leaving east of the station, Trautmannsdorf an der Leitha, Sarasdorf, Wilfleinsdorf, and a junction with a branch line north to the former Bratislava line now truncated at Wolfsthal.
Bruck an der Leitha has two platforms serving three tracks, with extra tracks on both sides. There is a freight yard on the south side, east of Bruck station. The River Leitha has been the Austro-Hungarian border until this part of Burgenland voted to become Austrian in the early 1920s. The line turns southeast as far as Perndorf Ost, a v-shaped station, which has two platforms on the tracks heading straight ahead (east) for Hungary, and a single platform on the line turning southwest to Neusiedl-am-See. Neusiedl-am-See has two platforms serving three tracks, with the station buildings to the southeast. At the southwest end of the station is another junction, with electrified track heading southward towards Pamhagen and on to Fertöszentmiklos (in Hungary), although the Austrian electrification doesn’t go that far, and a non-electrified single track heading southwestward towards Eisenstadt.
Most of the stations on the Eisenstadt line, which passes along a line of rolling hills to the northwest of the track, are simple single-platform affairs, many with little more than a shed for shelter, all on the northwest side of the line (where the villages are). On the southeast side of the line is a flat plain leading over to the Neusiedlersee, a shallow lake with no natural outlet that lies in the middle distance. Stations along this stretch are Jois, Winden, Breitenbrunn, Purbach am Neusiedlersee and Donnerskirchen. The line turns south past a closed station at Oggau, and then curves towards the west through Schützen Haltestelle.
Schützen am Gebirge has an island platform in between main track and siding, and is used for trains meeting one another. The station buildings are still to the northwest. The line continues to curve east past Schützen am Gebirge and heads east to Eisenstadt Schule, turning south the rest of the way into Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt also has an island platform, with tracks on either side used for train meets and for trains to wait for their next service. The substantial yellow-painted station building is on the northwest side of the line at the southwest end of the platform. Southwest of the station is a rail-served grain elevator on a spur on the northwest side off the main track, followed by a road crossing at grade.
Our train to Eisenstadt—the only through service of the day, it would appear— comprises different-looking stock as we walk out on the platform. But then, there are several sets of different-looking stock in these platforms, including MAV (Hungarian) stock on services to Budapest and ZSR (Slovakian) stock on services to Bratislava. When a locomotive backs onto our train, it appears that something quite different is involved: this is a black-colored mainline diesel, made by Henschel under license from General Motors many years ago, and at first appears to be lettered only “B B”, but on close inspection also has on Ö, and is merely an older logo for ÖBB. On inspection, the 2nd class only coaches prove to have similar older ÖBB identification.
On our way out of the station on the Ostbahn, we see locomotives painted for MAV (blue sides and yellow ends) and CAT (green and white). The latter seems to belong to the dedicated service of airport trains named for the City Airport Terminal (yes, in English), but would not normally be found along the Ostbahn main line. Beyond Brück an der Leitha is Perndorf Ort, a v-shaped station, with two platforms on the tracks heading straight ahead for Hungary, and a single platform on the line turning southwest to Neusiedl-am-See. Our train takes the latter, and then takes the righthand fork again after the latter, onto the non-electrified line to and through Eisenstadt. The Neusiedlersee is just visible towards the horizon on the southeast side of the line, with flat plains to and beyond the lake to the southeast and rolling hills to the northwest. The other trains that we see on this line on the way to Eisenstadt, are single and two-unit railcars in the green and yellow colors of the GySEV, which operates on both sides of the Hungarian border in this area. The railway is named for two towns in Hungary (Györ and Sopron) as well as Ebenfurth in Austria..
In Eisenstadt, we walk away from the station to the town center’s pedestrian zone, where we turn left following the signs to the Esterhazy Palace. We view and photograph the exterior and an interior courtyard of the palace, and buy its guidebook, but as with other palaces on this trip are not really interested in (and in this case do not have time for) a tour of the interior.
The Esterhazy Palace began as a 13th-century Gothic fortress, which passed into the ownership of the Esterhazy family in 1649 and was transformed into a baroque palace between 1663 and 1672. The courtyard and the main façade of the palace still maintain the exterior appearance of this building. The stuccoed grimaces on these facades are the work of Andrea Bertinalli, from northern Italy. Interior changes and external additions (such as the stables and guard house across from the main façade) were made during the 18th-century. This was the state of the palace when Haydn was employed here. French architect Charles Moreau supervised additions to the sides of the main palace, starting in 1803, in revolutionary classical style. Work on the planned additions was suspended in 1809, during the Napoleonic occupation, and no further exterior changes were made after that date. The Haydn Hall, an acoustically magnificent conert hall, is located immediately behind the courtyard façade that faces the visitor entering the courtyard from the main front.
We walk on up the hill to the church where Haydn is buried, which we go inside to the point where we can view the interior through glass-paned interior doors, and then back down the hill and past the palace, to the house where Haydn lived while he worked for the Esterhazy princes, where again we only look at the outside and the small courtyard. Eisenstadt is so small (only 12,000 people even today) that it is hard to realize that this was the place that the musicians at the summer palace of Esterhaza were homesick for, when Haydn wrote his Farewell symphony when the prince stayed there until late autumn one year.
Concluding we don’t have time to sit down for cups of tea and coffee, we walk back to the station, where our train back to Neusiedl-am-See proves to be a single-unit GySEV diesel railcar. At Neusiedl-am-See, we transfer to a mainline train coming in from the newly-electrified line, that will take us all the way back to the Südbahnhof (Ost), the same way we had come. This train is headed by one of the dual-voltage Class 1014 express locomotives that were built in anticipation of a World’s Exposition to be held jointly in Vienna and Budapest, with high-speed train shuttling between them, that ultimately never came to fruition. (The two voltages are Austria’s 15kV 16⅔ Hz and Hungary’s 25kV 50Hz.)
This time, sitting on the other side of the train, we observe and attempt to photograph the facilities and operations of the huge Kledering freight marshaling yard. Back at the Sudbahnhof, there is a MAV locomotive in the adjacent platform in one direction, and the CAT locomotive we had seen earlier, at the head of a train in the other, both versions of the Siemens “Taurus” represented by class 1116. Are fast airport services (CAT) running into these platforms, today, or is this a special train of some kind? We don’t take the time to try to find out.
On leaving the station, we cross both streets at the adjacent major intersection, and enter the upper corner of the Belvedere Gardens, diagonally across from the station. We walk north, towards the rear façade of the Upper Belvedere Palace, around its east end and down the middle of the gardens towards the city (which is magnificently arrayed above and beyond the Lower Belvedere Palace below us with the hills of Grinzing and Heiligenstadt beyond it to the north). At the abrupt height change in the middle of the gardens, we move to the east side and continue on past the Lower Belvedere and out onto Rennweg. Before reaching the square in front of the Lower Belvedere, we stop to look across Rennweg at the apartment building at number 5, where Gustav Mahler lived during his time as Director of the Vienna Court (as it was then) Opera from 1898 to 1907. Naturally, we only get to look at the outside of this building.
We then walk back to the hotel by way of the English-language bookstore on Kärntnerstrasse, where Chris buys a couple of books to read on the flight home, since she has finished all those she brought with her. At the hotel, we say hello and au revoir to Werner, who is sitting in the outdoor area of the bar, collect our luggage and head for the station.
The taxi takes us into streets between the hotel and the Hofburg, and then across the Ringstrasse and up the left side of the marketplace, past where we had walked two days earlier, all the way out to Gürtl, turning north to cross Mariahilferstrasse and pass the station, turning across Gürtl to enter the station area from its north side, and pulls up at the north end of the concourse. Inside, we have 30 minutes before our train is due to arrive in the platform, so we get some coffee and juice, and sit down to wait. We note from the arrivals board the trains from the Salzburg direction are on the order of 10-15 minutes late. Having seen trackwork out on the line we’re headed for, e.g. just east of St. Polten on Wednesday, we anticipate that our train, too, will see delays.
|
Date |
Train Operator |
Time |
From-To |
Train Stock |
Loco |
|
5-20-05 |
ÖBB (EC 60) |
1600 |
Vienna Wbf-Munich |
EuroCity |
1116 |
|
5-20-05 |
DB line U-8 |
2121 |
Munich Hbf-Flughafen |
DB S-Bahn |
|
Later, the arrivals board shows our train as being ten minutes late on its arrival from Budapest for its reversal in the station. Because of its reversal, the signs showing the order of cars is confusing, and we wait at the inner end of the platform, while the first class cars on the arriving train prove to be at the outer end. We are just about the last passengers to board a full car—thank goodness for those seat reservations we had made two weeks earlier! Our seat reservations are for the two window seats across a table, but we choose to sit on the forward-facing side of the table, leaving the other pair to a young mother and her small son who are going to Linz.
Vienna Westbahnhof has eleven stub-end tracks on the upper-level (one floor above street level), served by platforms covered with umbrella sheds. The signal control tower is on the north side of the line, just east of a road bridge. There is a carriage yard to the south, west of the road bridge at the station throat, and more carriage yards further west, east of Penzing. Initially, the line heads west-southwest, curving west on the approach to Penzing. The line from Heiligenstadt curves in from the north, heading west, on the east end of Penzing station. West of the station, the sidings of Penzing Verschiebebahnhof are on the south side of the line. The east leg of the wye to the belt line to Meidling and Kledering curves off towards the south, and then the west leg of the wye to the belt line trails in from the south.
There are freight yards on the south side, east of Hütteldorf, and subway yards (and station) on the south side at that station. Hütteldorf has three platforms serving five through tracks and a bay on the northeast side (serving line S-45 to Heiligenstadt and Handelskai), with station buildings on the north side; the pedestrian subway connecting these platforms is common with that at the U-bahn station adjacent to the south. West of Vienna’s suburbs, the line runs through the Vienna Woods, curving west-northwest to the west of Hütteldorf station, and then back to the west again at Hadersdorf-Weidlingau. At Wedilingau-Wurzbachtal, the line curves west-southwest. At one point, it crosses above a town on a long viaduct.
The line continues west-southwest through Purkersdorf Sanatorium, Purkersdorf Goblitz, Unter Tullnerbach, Tullnerbach Pressbaum, Pressbaum, Dürrwein, where it angles west, Rekawinkel, twists west-southwestward and then turns north briefly through Eichgraben Altlengbach. Turning west-northwest, the line passes through Unter Oberndorf, Maria Anzbach, Hofstatt, Neulengbach Markt, and Neulenbach, where it turns southwest to Ollersbach and then west through Kirchstatten. The line curves north-northwest through Boheimkirchen and Schildberg, turns west to Pottenbrun and then west-southwest.
East of St. Polten, a line from Vienna’s Nordwestbahnhof, running along the Danube, comes in from the northeast on a grade-separated junction, after which some tracks run in a trench for short distance towards the station. There are additional tracks on the south side of the line, east of the station. St. Polten has three main platforms serving five main tracks, with station buildings to the south, and two bay platforms serving four tracks (some of them narrow gauge) on the southwest side, with carriage yard on the north side of the station. There is a freight yard to the northwest of the station. The narrow gauge Mariazellerbahn departs to the southwest immediately at the west end of the station.
The main line starts out heading northwest, and then turns west-southwest through Friesing, Prinzersdorf, Markersdorf an der Pielach and Gross Sierning. The double-track historic main line curves northwest through Loosdorf and a tunnel to Melk, where it turns southwest, as the current main line shifts from the original Westbahn route to a 40 km stretch newly-built in 1994-1995 as the test area for rebuilding the entire line to 200 km/h maximum speed capability. The line passes through two double-track arc-roofed tunnels, and then through a junction where a double-track line heads northeast on a concrete bridge (likely where the original line returns). This appears to be just west of where the old line runs through Melk. The line continues west-southwest. Pöchlarn is a three platform, five-track station with station buildings to the north and a freight yard on the south side, a junction with the non-electrified line to Wieselburg, leaving to the southwest, and another double-track arc-roofed tunnel.
West of this tunnel, the Danube runs along the north side of the line, which heads west through Krummnussbaum, turns south through Persenbeug and then curves southwest through Ybbs and der Donau and Neumarkt an der Ybbs-Karlsbach, south-southwest through Hubertendorf and Blundenmarkt, and then west. Along this stetch, it seems that more of the line has now been built to the 200 km/h standards than just the “test” stretch bypassing Melk. The intent is to rebuild the entire line to have four tracks, with the high-speed lines having 200km/h capability. In many places, apparently, the new high-speed lines and the older lines comprising the four tracks in total will not be co-located. Amstetten has three platforms serving five tracks, plus a southwest bay, with station buildings to the north. The line to Waidhofen and Selzthal turns away south-southwest about a mile west of Amstetten station.
West of Amstetten, there are, indeed, four tracks, as the line heads southwest through Mauer-Öhling, Aaschbach and Krenstetten Biberbach, with some stations located only on the slower-speed tracks on the south side of the formation. At a distance of 134 km from Vienna, the pairs of lines separate, and the high-speed pair passes through another newly constructed tunnel before the lines come back together again. Another separation has the high-speed lines again passing through a tunnel quite a distance west of the separation, after which the lines rejoin again.
Along here, the line turns from a generally westerly heading (and specifically southwesterly at this point) to a north-westerly heading as far as Linz, with at least the historic line passing through St. Peter-Seitenstetten, St. Johann-Weistrach, Haag, Stadt Haag, where the line turns west and then due north, and Unterwinden. North of the junction with another line coming from Selzthal, to the south, down the Enns valley, St. Valentin station, km 164, has platforms on all four tracks, and a large freight yard to the south. The four tracks then reduce to two, while construction works for a new stretch of line are visible on the north side of the existing tracks. A non-electrified line that will head east along the north side of the Danube, leaves the main line to the northeast, north of St. Valentin station. The main line heads north through Ennasdorf and then turns west-northwest.
There is a station at Enns, with a freight yard on the north side of the line. There is more new roadbed to the north, west of Emms, as the historic main line (still in express train service, at this point) passes through Asten-St. Florien and Pichling, where a 900 mm museum line to St. Florian heads off to the south. Further west, the line becomes four tracks again, with the slow lines off to the south. Then, there is construction on the south side of the existing line, as the line speed decreases substantially, just to the east of Linz-Ebelsberg. A line from St. Georgen trails in from the east and a non-electrified line to Aigen-Schlägl heads off to the north. At this junction, the main line makes a big turn from west-northwest to southwest. A tunnel precedes the main station at Linz, which has six platforms serving twelve total tracks, with station buildings to the north, with carriage sidings to the south and more to the west of the station on the south side.
Two southwestward tracks emerge from a trench on the south side of the main line, which then reduces to two tracks. There is a wye junction with a line from the south (coming from the line west of Selzthal). Later, the line is again four tracks, the lines separate, the high-speed tracks pass through a tunnel, and the lines come back together again. At least the historic main line, still heading southwest, passes through Leonding, Pasching, Hörsching, Oferting, and Marchtrenk. There is a freight yard on the north side of the line east of Wels station, extending along the north side of the station area, with a roundhouse in the yard. This yard is where the Rolling Road trains for Slovenia are loaded and/or unloaded (on the north side of the east end of the yard). West of Wels, which has four platforms serving seven tracks and station buildings on the south side, the two-track line to Passau and on into Germany diverges to the northwest, while the two-track line to Salzburg continues southwest, with a signal tower in the ‘vee’ between the two lines. A non-electrified line to Grünau im Almtal departs to the south at the same junction. The line passes through Gunskirchen before reaching Lambach.Tall mountains are now visible to the south.
(For the route description from Lambach to Salzburg, see Sunday, May 15th, 2005.)
West of Salzburg, the two tracks turn west at the end of the station and cross the bridge over the Salzach heading almost due west through Salzburg Lehen. There are freight yards on both sides of the line, as it turns northwest, and shortly thereafter, enters Germany. At Freilassing, not far across the border, a branch to Berchtesgaden heads off to the south, , a non-electrified line head north to Mühldorf, and the main line turns west. The Bavarian Alps are visible off to the south as the line passes through Teisendorf, heads west-northwest for a distance, and then turns west. Further along, a non-electrified branch trails in from Waging am See, and the line turns southwest. Traunstein has three platforms serving five tracks with station buildings to the southeast.
At the west end of the station, a non-electrified line to Mühldorf heads north and an electrified branch to Ruhpolding heads south. At Bergen (oberbayern), the line turns west again. A freight-only non-electrified branch to Marquartstein heads south at the east end of Ubersee. At Bernau, the line turns north, and at Prien am Chiemsee, a non-electrified branch from Aschau trails in from the southwest and the meter gauge Chiemseebahn line to Prien Stock heads northeast. After passing the end of the Chiemsee on the east side of the line, the line turns west through Bad Endorf, beyond which a freight-only non-electrified line to Obing leaves to the north. The main line turns southwest through Stephanskirchen and then west again. A branch line from Rohrdorf trails in from the south on the east side of the river Inn.
After crossing the Inn, there is a wye junction with the line south to Wörgl and the line continuing eastward enters Rosenheim at the west apex of the wye. Rosenheim station has five platforms serving nine tracks, with station buildings to the north and carriage sidings to the south. A line to Holzkirchen (and thence to Munich) heads straight ahead due west, the main line to Munich turns north-northwest, and another non-electrified line to Mühldorf heads north, all at the west end of Rosenheim station. There are four tracks for much of the way from Rosenheim to Munich, passing through Grosskarolinenfeld, Ostermünchen, and Assling.
At Grafing, the east end of Munich S-bahn services, a branch from Ebersburg trails in from the north, and the line turns northwest, with the S-bahn tracks passing through Kirchseeon, Eglharting, where it turns west-northwest, Zorneding, Baldham, Vaterstetten, Haar, Gronsdorf and Tudering. There is a large freight yard on the north side, and an overgrown yard at a lower level on the south side. The line passes through Munich Ost Junction, where a freight line departs to the north, another S-bahn line comes in from the east-northeast, the S-bahn lines have Berg am laim station and the S-bahn line from the airport trails in from the north. The lines curve southwest past the S-bahn’s Leuchtenbergring station, and enter Munich Ostbahnhof, which has seven platforms serving fourteen tracks, including the S-bahn on the north side.
The main line continues southwest, under a flyover carrying S-bahn lines south, turns west-southwest and then northwest again, passes through a flying junction with a line from the south (with a bridge carrying one line over the main line to its north side) and then Munich Süd (Heimeranplatz), takes a big turn around to the north as a freight line heads straight ahead, with a freight yard on the west side between the two lines, passes in tunnel under the streets of Munich, and takes another big turn to head east adjacent to Donnersbergerbrücke, joining the lines heading from the west into Munich Hauptbahnhof.
As far as Amstetten (not a stop for this train), the route is the same as our return on Wednesday, and I note again the stretches of construction and apparently new higher-speed track. West of Amstetten there is more construction, there are more shallow-arc-roofed double track tunnels, and more signs of two other tracks taking a different quasi-parallel route, all suggestive of works to create a new higher-speed line along this route. In fact, I don’t notice St. Valentin, the junction with the line north from Selzthal at all, and we’re entering Linz before I expect it.
West of Linz, the car is much emptier than before! There is no evidence of higher-speed track between Linz and Wels, and after Wels the line to Salzburg will presumably not be getting this treatment any time soon. From Lambach, the line is the same one we had traveled on the previous Sunday. West of Salzburg station, the line crosses the Salzach and I get a couple of photos including one of the fortress above the river. At this point, after 7 pm, we decide to repair to the Restaurant Car one car behind, to have dinner. The food in this Hungarian-supplied dining car is excellent, but we are surprised when the steward refuses the charge card, since we had been assured that all such cars took cards. (The steward demurs on the grounds this is a Hungarian car! He has no answer when I ask what he would do if I had insufficient cash due to expecting to use the card.)
This stretch of line is new to Chris, but not to me. We see the Bavarian Alps off to the south, and the gap through which the Inn passes on its way down from Innsbruck. West of Rosenheim, the sun has set but the light remains almost all the way into Munich. After passing through Munich Ost Junction, we recognize places as we pass through the Ostbahnhof (seen from the S-Bahn) and then around the loop south of the city center to enter the Hauptbahnhof from the west. Leaving this train on track 1, just after 8:30 pm, we cross the whole concourse northward to descend into the S-bahn, where we have evidently just missed a train to the airport. The next one is a little after 9 pm, and gets us to the airport, and then the hotel, by 10 pm. We settle into the room and go to bed by 11 pm for our last night in Europe, this trip.
After the Thirty Years’ War had settled which religious denomination would be observed in which countries, states and provinces, there was a veritable explosion of church building in those countries (the Roman Catholic ones) where the building of decorated churches was permitted (nay, encouraged). These decorated churches form the centerpiece of the Baroque, and later Rococo, architectural style in central Europe. There are magnificent examples of Baroque/Rococo churches, more beautiful on the inside than the outside in many cases, in Bavaria, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest, Prague and Krakow, and recreated examples in Warsaw. Palaces built, extended or remodeled in the same era also follow the Baroque and Rococo architectural styling.
In the early Baroque period, Germanic countries were dependent on artists imported from Italy, and one of the earliest examples of this was Enrico Zocalli’s Church of the Theatines in Munich, across the street from the west side of the Residenz there. Another early Baroque gem is the Jesuit Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, in Krakow. The full flowering of the Baroque period in Gemanic and Eastern European countries had to await the development of native architects and artists in the late Baroque period.
The first great Germanic baroque architect was Johann Bernard Fischer von Erlach, who was responsible for the Univeristy Church in Salzburg and the Karlskirche (among many other buildings) in Vienna, followed by Luca von Hildebrandt, architect of the Mirabell Palace in Salzburg and the Belvedere Palaces in Vienna. The most grandiose example of the German Rococo is the Benedictine Monastery of Ottobeuren, near the frontier between Swabia and Bavaria, a kind of ‘summing-up’ of the whole period.
In the decorative arts, the masters in Germany were sculptor Egid Quirin Asam and his brother, church painter Kosmas Damian Asam, Johann Baptist Zimmermann, and brother sculptors Josef Anton and Johann Michael Feuchtmayer.
In the morning, we check out of the hotel a little after 9 am and walk to the Lufthansa Terminal. An attempt to use the Quick Check-in machines shows only one ticketed person for our charge card, so we reluctantly join the lengthy line at the ticket counter. The line moves surprisingly quickly, our tickets really are for two people, and we’re through security and up in the gate area by 10:20 am (as the previous hourly flight to Frankfurt is boarding). In the airport shop, we finally find a small stuffed animal for Chessie.
We board our 11:30 am flight on time, but in spite of the sunshine in Munich there’s apparently bad weather in Frankfurt and we don’t take off until 12:10 pm, making us a half hour late into Frankfurt. This still gives us an hour for our connection, so we think nothing of it, but the ‘terminal’ to ‘terminal’ (within the Lufthansa Terminal) transfer takes us out of the security area, and having passed through gate check and the first security area, there is then a second gate check and a second security area as we enter the area where the international flights (including those to the US) depart. We’re informed that the US is responsible for this state of affairs. There is less than ten minutes to go when we join the boarding line for our flight. (Tour group members had warned against changing planes in Frankfurt, and now we know why.)
On the plane, we had chosen aisle and middle seats on this 747, but the passenger in the window seat badgers us about changing seats with him, and finally he gets the attendants involved and moves to the row in front, aisle seat. The reading light is rather dim at my aisle seat, so I get less reading done than I expected. The plane is on time into Los Angeles at 4:35 pm (1:35 am on Munich time), and in spite of inadequate signage of which line to get into, slow baggage delivery, and people pushing into the line to leave the baggage area, we’re out in the terminal by 5:35 pm. Checking on where the bus departs from, I run into Nancy Davis, the realtor from Tehachapi Realtor who had helped us buy our house. We think we’ve just missed a bus to Van Nuys, so Chris goes into the terminal to call Max. Then, the Flyaway bus appears, and I run into the terminal to find Chris. I don’t find her, but she’s back out in time for us to board that bus by 5:55 pm.
The bus leaves the airport at 6:06 pm, and is at Van Nuys Flyaway at 6:38 pm. It takes almost fifteen minutes to get our bags, though, and by the time we walk out to the pickup area, Max is pulling up with our car. We drive to Max’s house to drop him off, and greet his wife Valerie before heading for Tehachapi. We leave Max’s house at 7:12 pm, as the sun is showing signs of setting on this apparently hot day in the San Fernando Valley. Chris is driving because my eyes are tired, and we see no need to stop along the way, so we’re home just before 8:50 pm, half an hour after the sun has set, but before complete darkness has fallen.
This has been a wonderful trip, with congenial companions and a wonderful guide on the tour, but we didn’t spend enough time in Vienna so I’m glad we have three more full days there in early June before the start of the Eastern European Capitals tour.