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s yet, there were no steam engines, no soot and no smoke
when Emperor Franz I and his consort Karolina Augusta
took the first train in 1832 to travel the short distance from
Linz to St. Magdalena – the cars were still pulled by horses. This
was such an important event that a small monument was erected
to commemorate the august visitors. Four years later Emperor
Ferdinand I decreed the building of the first steam train line in
Austria. The initiative was due to Salomon Baron of Rothschild,
who knew the advantages of train travel from his time in England,
where trains had been part of the transportation system since
1825. Thus it was only logical that the first locomotive for the
Austrian railroads was built in England. As early as 1837, the
"Nordbahn" steamed from Floridsdorf to Wagram in the Marchfeld.
In 1857 an additional Court Carriage traveled the “Südbahn” and
the Empress-Elisabeth-Railroad. In 1863, the Hamburg-based
company Lauenstein delivered a Court Carriage with three axles,
still with open platforms, to the Carl Ludwig-Railroad, and in 1864
sent an additional one to the Kaiser Ferdinand-Nordbahn. The
railroad system was extended with incredible swiftness: in 1840,
there were 3,000 kilometers of railroad tracks; by 1860, there were
already 50,000 kilometers, and around 1900 the railroad system
boasted 300,000 kilometers in all.
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