Until the mid-19th century, people had thought it was impossible to build a railway through the Alps. Railway engineering was still very new at that time. The Alps were a challenging environment, with steep slopes and very high places. However, after years of planning, about 20,000 people worked by hand for six years to achieve the impossible. As a result, the world’s first mountain railway was constructed to the southwest of Vienna, the capital of Austria. To this day, the Semmering Railway remains a remarkable achievement in engineering that forms a beautiful harmony with the Alps’ natural environment.

The Semmering Railway project was designed and directed by Karl Ritter von Ghega. He was born in 1802 in Venice, Italy. At the age of 18, he became a doctor of mathematics and began his career in road and hydraulic engineering. To learn more about railway engineering, he traveled in Europe and the United States. He spent almost all of 1842 in North America studying railroads and bridges. He paid particular attention to the new Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which went through the Allegheny Mountains. The high quality of the railway construction and the power of American locomotives greatly impressed him. In those days, American engineers were using some of the world’s most advanced technologies.

In the early 1840s, Ghega was given the task of building a national railway in Austria. The government wanted to build a railway connecting Vienna to the port city of Trieste in modern-day Italy, which was an important business and naval center for the empire. However, this railway would have to cross the Semmering Pass, a part of the Alps that reaches as high as 985 meters. Building the necessary tunnels and bridges in such a location was considered to be impossible with the technology of the time. Only horse-drawn carriages could move across this rough mountainous area, people thought. But Ghega accepted this challenge.

Although the project would certainly be difficult, Ghega came up with a plan for the Semmering Railway that would make the most of locomotive technology. He first submitted his proposal to the director of state railways, but it was not immediately accepted. One of the reasons for the delay was that nothing like this project had been done before. For example, the project required a 1,430-meter-long main tunnel, but there were no previous examples of such long tunnels. However, the 1848 revolution in Vienna led to increased travel to other areas of the empire, so the need for a railway also increased. This provided a big incentive for following through with Ghega’s proposal.

Construction of the Semmering Railway finally began on July 27, 1848. As everyone had expected, the project was unbelievably hard. At the beginning, there were about 5,000 workers, but later 20,000 were working on the railway. The explosives and advanced tunnel-digging equipment used today did not exist in the 19th century, so the workers had to do all of the construction by hand. The work was hard and dangerous. On October 27, 1850, falling rocks killed 14 of the workers. Between 1850 and 1852, some 750 people working on the railway were killed by diseases such as cholera and typhoid.

In spite of the difficulties, Ghega’s vision was realized. His ideas for the construction of the railway reflected concern for harmony with the natural environment and made use of the latest technologies. He rejected the use of iron and steel, and instead used brick and stone to build most of the important structures. Nearly 65 million bricks and 80,000 stones were used. Many of the stations and buildings along the way were built using waste material from the construction.

Finally, the first trials were run in October 1853, and in July 1854 the first passengers made the journey. People could finally cross the Alps in just two hours. The total route covered 41,825 meters. Its highest point was 898 meters, the highest altitude at which a railway had ever been built at the time. Not only did the Semmering Railway make life more convenient, but it also enhanced the natural beauty of the Alps. The stone viaducts and other structures gave the railway a postcard-style beauty, which attracted tourists from all over the world. The viaduct across Kalte Rinne is particularly beautiful, and has often been featured in photographs and paintings.

Over 150 years have passed since the Semmering Railway was completed. Even today it still remains both an important transportation route and a wonderful sightseeing destination. Visitors can take the train from Austria to Italy and enjoy breathtaking scenery along the way. Three of the twenty-six miles (42 kilometers) of the journey are through tunnels, and one mile is composed of viaducts. For his vision that architecture should be in harmony with the natural environment, Ghega was knighted in 1851, and for many years his picture was on the Austrian 20 schilling note. In 1998, the Semmering Railway became the first railway to be named by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.