Category — history

Railways played a crucial role for the diffusion of Alpinism in Europe. In the 19th century only railways allowed a wider publicum to travel the large distances from the urban areas in Europe to the Alps. The first true mountain railway happened to be in Eastern Austria crossing the Semmering Pass (982m) as part of the greater link between Vienna and Triest in the Adriatic. Soon the number of travellers to the mountains around the Semmering Pass increased dramatically.

Learning from the engineering lessons of the Semmering railway more and more mountain railways started to connect the remote corners of the Alps with the urban centres. Read more about this pioneering railway of the 19th century …

Semmering Railway. The World’s First High Mountain Railway