| The Semmering Railway is the first mountain railway which crossed a high-mountains area and counts therefore as the prototype of railway lines mastering very difficult terrain and considerable altitude difference.
The railway was constructed between 1848 and 1854 by some 20,000 workers under the project's designer and director Carl von Ghega. The construction features 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.
Across an overall track length of 41 km the Semmering railway masters an altitude difference of 460 m; on 60% of its length the steepness is 20-25 (equivalent to a 1-meter difference in altitude on a 40 m route distance), and 16% exhibit a curvature radius of only 190 m. This was an entirely new technical dimension of railway construction, and new instruments and methods of surveying had to be developed to handle the resulting challenges. Also, new technologies were employed for the Engerth locomotives because the types in general use at this time could not handle the extreme gradients and turning radii.
Inscribed in 1998 |