Schneebergbahn

The Schneeberg is the mountain that waters Vienna, and it has no water of its own at the top.

Rain and snowmelt sink straight into its limestone, run through the rock and come out as springs at its foot. In 1873, after four years of building, the city finished its first mountain-spring pipeline from the Schneeberg and the Rax, and Vienna still drinks that water today. The slopes are a protected catchment, looked after by the city's own foresters. The same rock that feeds the springs leaves the plateau dry. Water for the steam engines used to come up by goods train, to tanks at the passing loops, and a water main reached the summit station only at the end of 2003.

The railway has been climbing it since 1897. It runs 9.85 kilometres from Puchberg, at 577 metres, to Hochschneeberg at 1,800 metres, climbing 1,227 metres on an Abt rack and metre-gauge track, with gradients of up to 19.7 per cent. The operator calls the summit station the highest railway station in Austria. The line opened in two stages that year, to Baumgartner on 1 June and to the top on 25 September, and its concession of 1895 named its destination as a hotel still to be built there. The hotel, designed by Fellner & Helmer, opened in June 1898.

Since 1999 the work has been done by the Salamanders, diesel rack trains in a dark green livery splashed with yellow, which take about forty minutes to the top. Two of the original steam engines, built by Krauss in 1897 and 1900, still run on a few Sundays a year and take about an hour and a half over the same climb.

The rack railway starts beside the ÖBB station at Puchberg am Schneeberg, at the end of the branch from Wiener Neustadt. Its own station stands beside the Kurpark pond, with the Tourismusportal next door, opened in 2015, which holds the railway's shop and its exhibition on the imperial Schneeberg.

A Salamander is a set of three: a diesel rack locomotive, an intermediate car and a driving car, 119 seats in all. On the way up it pushes a small goods wagon ahead of it, the Salamander-Baby, which carries prams, wheelchairs and goods, and on the way down it pulls it. The train never goes faster than 19.5 km/h.

The climb

The line is single track, with three passing loops. Four minutes out it stops at Hengsttal, and then climbs through forest to Hengsthütte, 1,012 metres up, sixteen minutes from the valley. Half an hour after leaving Puchberg it reaches Baumgartner at 1,322 metres. Above it the line works along the mountainside through two tunnels, 177 and 202 metres long, and comes out onto the open plateau for the last stretch to Hochschneeberg, forty minutes from the start.

The gradient reaches 197 per thousand. The rack is the Abt system, two toothed bars side by side, laid the whole way because the engines drive only through their cogwheels.

At the top

The summit station, opened in 2009, is built onto the side of the Berghaus Hochschneeberg, the hotel that the railway's builders had to put up as part of the contract and that opened in 1898. A few minutes' walk away is the Elisabethkirchlein, which Franz Joseph commissioned in 1901 in memory of the Empress Elisabeth. The Emperor rode up on 18 June 1902 to see the church and the hotel.

From here the plateau opens out. On a clear day the view runs over the Puchberg basin to the Neusiedler See and the Hungarian plain, over the Rax and deep into Styria. The summit itself, the Klosterwappen at 2,076 metres, is the highest point in Lower Austria and an hour or more on foot, past the Damböckhaus to the Fischerhütte. A marked path follows the railway all the way back down to Puchberg in about three hours.

The engines

Five steam engines were built for the line by Krauss, and two are still in working order: 999.02 of 1897 and 999.05 of 1900. Each pushes two original coaches of 50 seats, at no more than 10 km/h uphill, and carries 1,200 kilograms of water and 700 of coal. A third, 999.01 Kaiserstein, stands as a monument outside Puchberg station.

The Salamanders arrived in 1999 and first ran on 24 July that year, after the design was unveiled in December 1998. They took over the everyday trains, and steam has been kept for the nostalgia Sundays ever since.

Who has owned it

The line was built by the contractor Leo Arnoldi and worked from 1899 by the Vienna–Aspang Railway, whose main shareholder was a Belgian railway company. The state railways took over the running in 1937, the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1938, and in 1940 the line was nationalised without compensation to its shareholders. The Austrian Federal Railways ran it from 1947 to 1996. Since 1 January 1997 it has been worked by the Niederösterreichische Schneebergbahn, owned by NÖVOG and ÖBB, and since 2012 the track itself has belonged to NÖVOG, the State of Lower Austria's transport company.

The 2026 season to the summit runs daily from 1 May to 1 November. The timetable is built around five fixed trains each way; when demand calls for it, more run in between, as often as every half hour. Bad weather can cut the service short or stop it, and the operator's webshop shows the day's trains.

Salamander trains — 1 May to 1 November 2026

Up to the summit:

Down to Puchberg:

The last train down leaves the summit at 16:45. Seats are limited, and the operator recommends buying online, where a ticket is booked to a particular train.

Nostalgia steam trains

The steam train runs on some Sundays outside July and August, and on 1 May: in 2026 on 1, 17 and 31 May, 14 June, 13 and 27 September, and 11 and 25 October. It leaves Puchberg at 10:50 and reaches the summit at 12:21, about an hour and a half. It comes down at 15:47, back in Puchberg at 16:47. Dogs are not carried on the steam train.

After the season

From 5 to 15 November 2026, Thursday to Sunday, the Goldener Herbst trains run as far as Baumgartner, six a day between 09:00 and 15:00, and passengers can hop off at Hengsthütte. On 5 and 6 December there are Advent trains to Hengsthütte, leaving Puchberg at 09:30, 11:00, 13:00, 15:30 and 17:00, and on Christmas Eve trains run to Hengsthütte again. The 2027 dates are not yet published.

Getting to Puchberg

ÖBB regional trains run to Puchberg from Wiener Neustadt every hour, in about 47 minutes, and Wiener Neustadt is half an hour from Vienna. The 06:55 from Wien Hauptbahnhof, changing at Wiener Neustadt into the 07:37, arrives at Puchberg at 08:24, in time for the first train up. On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays a through train leaves Wien Hauptbahnhof at 08:38 and reaches Puchberg at 10:24.

Times as of October 2026, from the Schneebergbahn's timetable (opens in a new tab) and ÖBB's journey planner.

Tickets are sold in the Niederösterreich Bahnen webshop and on the spot in Puchberg, and each is booked to a train. There are no classes; the fare depends on the season, with a higher price from July to September. A Basis ticket can be rebooked for €7, or half refunded up to five days before; a Flex ticket costs €3.50 more and can be rebooked free until an hour before the train. The steam train costs €12.50 extra each way.

Children from 6 to 14 pay the child fare, and under-6s ride free on a lap. Seniors from 65, groups of twenty and holders of several local cards pay a reduced fare; Vienna City Card holders get a discount too. Dogs pay their own fare and must be leashed and muzzled. Read from the operator in October 2026.

No rail pass covers the Schneebergbahn. Interrail lists it by name among the Austrian lines its passes are not valid on, and the KlimaTicket, Austria's annual all-network ticket, names it among the services it does not cover. Everyone buys a Schneebergbahn ticket.

A pass still gets you to the foot of the mountain. The ÖBB regional trains from Vienna and Wiener Neustadt to Puchberg are covered by an Interrail Austria Pass or a Global Pass, with no reservation needed, and by the KlimaTicket. For this trip alone a pass is not worth buying. The card that does help is the Niederösterreich-CARD, the province's sightseeing pass, which includes one free return trip on the Salamander trains per season.

Checked October 2026 against Interrail's table of railway companies (opens in a new tab), the KlimaTicket's validity page (opens in a new tab) and the Schneebergbahn's fares page (opens in a new tab).

The Schneeberg is the highest mountain in Lower Austria, and a day here can reach well beyond the summit station. These five are the town at the foot of the line, the plateau and the true summit above it, the cable car up the neighbouring Rax, and the city where you change trains on the way.

Stay at the top, in the hotel the railway was built to reach, and you have the plateau to yourself once the last train has gone down; or stay in Puchberg, beside the valley station.

Planning this trip and stuck on something, or spotted a time, fare or detail that has changed? Send us a message about Schneebergbahn. We read every one, and we update this page when something has changed.