History

Railways have existed in Austria since 1837. After the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy, however, the railway parts were heavily in debt and structurally completely obsolete, so that the government of the time decided on July 19, 1923 to hand them over to professional management as a "separate economic entity". ÖBB began operations on October 1, 1923, with nearly 113,000 employees and 2,600 steam locomotives. These consumed 2.2 million tons of coal per year.

Today, ÖBB is almost three times smaller in terms of the number of employees, but it transports almost four times as many passengers and goods. And in terms of traffic volume, they are almost completely electrified - with 100% green electricity, of course. It is probably one of the greatest transformations in Austrian economic history that ÖBB has accomplished.

A separate website is dedicated to this history: ÖBB History.

As of February, 02 2023