Semmering Railway

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Semmering Railway with surrounding mountain scenery

Semmering Railway at Mürzzuschlag, around 1900

Semmering Railway viaduct, around 1900

The Semmering Railway, Austria, which starts at Gloggnitz and leads over the Semmering to Mürzzuschlag is commonly referred to as the world's first mountain railway, especially given the very difficult terrain and difference in height. It was the first mountain railway in Europe built with a standard gauge track, and is still fully functional. The Semmering Railway is part of the Austrian Southern Railway.

The designer of the Semmering Railway, Carl Ritter von Ghega, used the newest technologies for the construction of locomotives, which were the first ones to handle the extreme upward gradients and turning radii. The Semmering Railway has an overall length of 41 km and a difference in height of 460 m. It was constructed between 1848 and 1854. The railway has 14 tunnels (among them the 1,431 m vertex tunnel), 16 viaducts (several two-story) and over 100 curved stone bridges as well as 11 small iron bridges. 60% of the length of the Semmering Railway has an upward gradient of 20-25‰. The distance is nearly throughout curved, whereby 16% of the distance exhibits the closest rail radius of 190 m. At the same time while building the track the retaining walls, buildings of supervision and stations were often built from the waste material of the tunnel construction. The geological material of the landscape was used directly to its structural organization.

A large problem of the railway at the time of building was the fact that the measure of the distance for the draft could not be done correctly. New instruments and methods of surveying had to be developed for the accomplishment of this problem. The gradient ratio of up to 25‰ (= a meter difference in height on a 40 m route distance) and the minimum turning radius of 190 m in this order of magnitude were mastered for the first time. To the enterprise on this distance the construction of new locomotives were necessary, which could give substantial new impulses to the building of railways. The tunnels and the viaducts of the track were established by 20,000 workers in six years and represented for the time from the technical and from the organizational criterion a large achievement.

The Semmering Railway was understood already at the present of their completion as "landscape gardening", i.e. as harmonious combination of technology and nature, which offered a unique travel experience. The Semmering Railway opened the landscape of the Semmering for tourism. Numerous buildings of hotels and mansions are witnesses of this epoch. This enormous upswing to the turn of the century and the revaluation of the region as winter sports area in the first third 20. Century were interrupted later first by wartime and by the changed vacation needs. Therefore this unique culture landscape could be kept unchanged. A trip on the Semmering Railway, whose route is still functioning 150 years after its building, still turns out with its varied landscape, the typical buildings of mansions and the characteristic succession of viaducts and tunnel constructions as special experience.

In 1998 the Semmering Railway was added to the list of the UNESCO World Heritage sites.