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Location / Name:
Graz, Styria, Austria
What's Here:
Tram System - 7 Routes
Tramway Museum Graz
Graz Hauptbahnhof, the central train station in Graz
The "Graz funicular" / Schlossbergbahn
Data:
GPS Coordinates/as needed
Access by train/transit:
Köflach railway line
Koralm railway line
Southern railway line
Styrian Eastern railway line [de]
Graz Tram System
Geography:
Very Hilly
The Scoop:
Graz has a variety of rail services available to the traveler. Here is a quick look coming from Google AI:
Trains in Graz are operated by Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and serve as a major hub for both regional and long-distance travel, connecting the city with national and international destinations. The city's central station (Graz Hauptbahnhof) features high-speed Railjet and regional S-Bahn Styria services, and is accessible by tram and bus. ÖBB also operates various other regional and high-speed trains, including the international Transalpin and EuroCity trains.
Key train services in and around Graz::
Railjet: High-speed trains connecting Graz with other major Austrian cities like Vienna and international destinations such as Prague and Venice.
S-Bahn Styria: Provides regional connections, with services to the surrounding areas and smaller towns.
Transalpin: An international EuroCity service operated by ÖBB and Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), connecting Graz with Zurich, Switzerland, via Liechtenstein.
Regional Trains: A variety of regional trains, including the Cityjet, Talent, and Desiro, also connect Graz with numerous destinations.
From Omvro, we have this overview:
So train service, it might get a little complicated, but for starters:
There are two major suburban train companies, with one that serves branch lines further out doing a few trips to and from Graz Hbf. (Hauptbahnhof) every day too. I don't know how familiar you are with the "S-Bahn" system of German (somewhat) fame, but we have a system similar to that too. It does have the same name, but isn't actually an S-Bahn system, as it mainly uses the mainlines and doesn't have dedicated right-of-ways.
In any case::
-- The ÖBB does the most lines, north, south, and east,
-- The GKB (local railroad) runs to the east, and,
-- The StB (basically the railroad of the state of styria) does the branch lines and the occasional runs to Graz.
I attached a Plan of the System here too. It's shown on the map itself, but as you can see, everything apart from S7, S6, S61 (GKB) / S11 & S31(StB) is run by the ÖBB. They offer frequent enough service, averaging around 15 minutes in peak times over the entire system I'd say. Though I'd have to check that more thoroughly. GKB stands for "Graz Köflacher Bahn" (Köflach being a small town east of Graz that used to have a lot of Coal mining) (incidentally, on the preliminary map of the tram system, you can already see "Graz Köflacherbahnhof" directly next to the Hauptbahnhof. That was once the property of the GKB (Köflacherbahnhof denoting that it was the Station for trains to and from Köflach), is now owned by ÖBB too (as is all of the track and infrastructure since a few years, as the state government didn't have any interest in funding public transit and the federal government had to step in basically).
Additionally, Omvro writes:
The ÖBB (and ÖBB Infra, a daughter Company) owns and operates all the mainline track in Austria. That makes for a pretty efficient system overall. Only smaller systems, branch lines or narrow gauge lines are owned and operated by, mostly still sort of non-private(e.g. what we call 'in public hands'... it's a bit complicated...) railways companies. That's what the GKB is, for example: it's owned by the Republic of Austria, but is, by law, a private railway. If that doesn't make sense to you, that's fair. The GKB used to own and operate all it's tracks ("Köflacherbahn & Wieserbahn"), but it's Infrastructural department got 'bought up' by the ÖBB in 2024 (there's several reasons for that, but mainly, the new Koralmbahn High(er) speed Line to Klagenfurt interchanges with the Wieserbahn (S6/61) a few times, and it's operationally more efficient this way. So the ÖBB also owns these tracks now, they call it 'Steirische Westbahn' Styrian Eastern Railway.
The StB is owned by the Styrian state. It owns the tracks of the:
♦ Lokalbahn Peggau-Deutschfeistritz to Übelbach, the Übelbacherbahn (S11) (Lokalbahn is a german word encompassing branch lines, narrow gauge lines, basically anything that's not big enough to be called a regional railway...)
♦ The tracks from Gleisdorf to Weiz (both quite... (relatively) large towns east of Graz (S 31) (The Übelbacherbahn is dispatched from Weiz I believe).
♦ And a third standard gauge line that runs from Feldbach (town in the southeast of Styria) to Bad Gleichenberg(a famous spa-town, the line there is the only electrified railway east of Graz (the S3 to Feldbach (and beyond) is run by Diesel-mechanic DMU's) and has a unique electrification (for Styria). It only runs on Weekends these days, sadly :(
The StB also owns 2 narrow gauge lines (both 760mm), though only one of them runs regularly.
♦ The Feistritztalbahn from Weiz up north, it used to have regular steam excursion, but the styrian state government doesn't like spending money on public services, so there has been talks of permanent closure for a while now.
♦ The Murtalbahn up in the north of Styria is still very much in use (runs from Tamsweg in the state of Salzburg to Unzmarkt in Styria), it's main usage is by students, but it also runs Steam trains from time to time.
There's 2 more narrow gauge lines (760mm) here:
♦ The Lokalbahn Mixnitz - St. Erhard is owned by a Magnesite mine, though the StB runs the train(s?) that brings it to the mainline.
♦ And the Stainzerbahn used to be owned by the StB, the municipality of Stainz stepped up when regular service got stopped and started to run a tourist train, the Stainzer Flascherlzug. end Omvro
From the 'Interview with OBB' comes: ÖBB is the leading rail operator in Austria. We have three branches: Infrastructure, freight and passenger services. We'll be focusing a little more on passenger services - in this sector we are the biggest operator in Austria. We are a state-owned company historically but now, in a much more economic environment, with other operators as well, we have an open market in Austria. With some other companies operating in the business but nevertheless we are still by far the biggest operator. In passenger services we have three areas where we are focussing. Most of our passengers we have on commuting services and domestic services where we are focussing on the big cities as well as offering all the services in a rural area. And then we have two long distance businesses, one is technically day business where we operate around 300 trains, while more than 200 are international. Due to the situation in Austria, we have many neighbours and we are running a lot of through trains, starting in Budapest, crossing Austria and going to Munich. We have trains coming down from the Czech Republic to the south of Austria. We operate international trains through to Italy and through all our neighbours we have a very strong connection to Germany. In addition, we have a second segment internationally where we are the leading company in Europe in the night train business. We operate the brand Nightjet which was introduced ourselves in 2016 and are by far the leading night train operator in Europe.
At the end of line 1, is the Tramway Museum Gratz. They have a comprehensive collection of the Trams used in Gratz over the years. And in looking at the pictures on the page below, they take them out onto the system for excursions.
https://heussler.zenfolio.com/p32109582
Note to English speakers: bahnhof = railroad station. So, Köflacherbahnhof is the Köflacher railroad station.
Acknowledgements/Quellen:
Omvro, without whose help, this page would not be possible!
Eigenes Werk
Google Maps
Open Railway Map
Open Street Map
Wikipedia
Websites and other additional information sources of interest for the area:
https://graz.zeitlinie.at/en/ Cool website showing the growth of the Tram System
https://heussler.zenfolio.com/strassenbahn_graz Comprehensive picture page of the Graz Tram System
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Austria the Rail System of Austria
https://ilovegraz.com/2019/05/19/public-transportation-graz/ Good informative site with tips about traveling around Graz, in English
https://www.wearerailfans.com/c/article/obb-railjet-nightjet-1
Getting to G
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Sights
Graz Hauptbahnhof - Central Train Station
Tramway Museum Graz
Graz HauptbahnhofGPS-Koordinaten: 47.07265, 15.41719
https://www.oebb.at/en/regionale-angebote/steiermark/hauptbahnhof-graz
Second busiest station in Austria after Vienna.
Current station built in 1956 after the 1876 station was destroyed in 1945.
Owned by: Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB)
Operated by: ÖBB Infra
Tracks: 9
Platforms: 4 island / 1 side
Railroads:
-- Köflach railway line
-- Koralm railway line
-- Southern railway line
-- Styrian Eastern railway line [de]
Tramway Museum GrazPlease click here
A few pictures to get this section started: ???
Over Kärntner StraßeGPS Coordinates: 47.05884, 15.41927
Signals / Straßenbahnsignal
Note to English speakers - Straßenbahnsignal is Tram Signals,
Zugsignal is for train signals.
111GPS Coordinates:
The
These are courtesy Mark Vogel and were found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_vogel/4038496651/in/photostream/ (edited for clarity)
Physical Plant / Grade Crossings / Etc
For most Americans who have not traveled the world, railroad infrastructure (grade crossings, catenary and catenary poles, signs, etc) outside North America looks "strange" to us. In contrast, I'm sure when many non-Americans come to the United States, they think our stuff looks "weird"! :-) (Especially B&O CPL's and PRR/Amtrak PL signals) So, with that said, let's take a look at some of the equipment we come across in Austria.
Grade Crossing Protection
Mileposts
222GPS Coordinates:
The
Below is a Google AI overview of the train services available in Graz. They are covered in more detail below.
https://www.wearerailfans.com/c/article/obb-railjet-nightjet-1
Railjet is basically our prime product for day traveling. We are operating at the moment 60 trains on various lines internationally and nationally. For example, most of the Railjet trains run internationally and we have a frequent service from Budapest to Munich, from Prague to Graz, to Italy eg. from Vienna to Venice, so this is our prime product for day business. We offer three classes on these trains, we have classic economic '2nd' class, then we have 1st class and a small area for our so-called business class which is a level higher where passengers can get a higher level of service. What's important to remember if you're traveling with Railjet is that each train has an onboard restaurant and with first class and business class you get a meal and refreshments served at your seat like on aircraft. The maximum speed of these trains is 230 kph (approx 142 mph) and we have some lines in Austria where we can run these speeds but we can also go on some conventional lines so when we are crossing some areas where the network is not that good or well established we can also in the meantime run on normal networks. But in general, we run this train at 230kph. It is the backbone for long distance travelling in Europe.
What is quite interesting is that ÖBB is running 60 Railjets and the Czech Railways - České dráhy - from the Czech Republic have also ordered 6 trains in a similar configuration also running as Railjet. They run them in a different colour, our trains are red, theirs are blue, but in general we are working with them very closely and on some lines we are doing these services together, for example to Berlin via Prague to Vienna and together they offer the same quality product as ÖBB do with the same brand Railjet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styria_S-Bahn
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Eigenes Werk
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Railway_%28Austria%29
From Wikipedia: The Southern Railway (German: Südbahn) is a railway in Austria that runs from Vienna to Graz and the border with Slovenia at Spielfeld via Semmering and Bruck an der Mur. Along with the Spielfeld-Straß–Trieste railway (lying largely in Slovenia), it forms part of the Austrian Southern Railway that connected Vienna with Trieste, the main seaport of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, via Ljubljana. A main obstacle in its construction was getting over the Semmering Pass over the Northern Limestone Alps. The twin-track, electrified section that runs through the current territory of Austria is owned and operated by Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) and is one of the major lines in the country. end Wiki
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