Lake Achensee Railway

What the Zillertal Railway is for the Zillertal valley, the Lake Achensee Railway (Achenseebahn) is for Lake Achensee: a particularity and nostalgic transportation. In 1889, only two years after the first steamboat set sail on Lake Achensee, four cogwheel steam locos came into operation. They were named Theodor, Hermann, Georg and Carl. One of them was scrapped after WWII, so until 2005 only the three remaining locomotives were in use. Today, again four locos are in operation.

These oldest cogwheel steam locomotives of Austria each consist of a closed wagon and an open summer wagon. One particularity of the railway is the narrow gauge of 1,000 mm: The distance has always been about 7 km long, it starts at the railway station of Jenbach, the only Austrian train station with three different rail gauges.

From there the steam train is pushed uphill until Eben am Achensee, where the flat journey starts. The train steams and whistles until Seespitz, where the connection to the Lake Achensee Ferry and Cruise Company is possible. Everybody who is interested in trains should visit the Tyrolean Museum Railways in Innsbruck with the Local Railways Museum, only 50 km away.