Zillertalbahn

The Zillertalbahn carries about 3.6 million passengers a year. Some 13,300 of them ride the steam train.

The railway was the valley's own idea. In the 1890s the road up the Zillertal still ran through marshland, and a traveller bound for Mayrhofen had to spend a night in Zell am Ziller on the way. The mayors of the valley formed a railway committee, settled on a narrow gauge to keep the cost down, and in December 1899 founded a company to build it from the main line at Jenbach. The first trains ran to Fügen a year later, and the line reached Mayrhofen in July 1902. The valley's municipalities still own most of the company today.

For most of the twentieth century steam simply ran the trains. That changed in June 1991, when the line went over to a regular timetable with trains at fixed intervals: the steam trains were taken out of it and became a slow, nostalgic train of their own, with fewer stops and their own fares. Since December 2008 the ordinary trains have run every half hour all day.

So there are two railways on the one track. The everyday one is a 32-kilometre line on a 760-millimetre gauge, worked by red diesel railcars and push-pull trains from half past six in the morning until eight at night, carrying school pupils, commuters, skiers and walkers. The other runs on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in summer: a steam engine at the head of wooden-seated coaches, some of them more than 120 years old, taking an hour and a half over a journey the railcars make in fifty minutes.

The Zillertalbahn starts from its own platforms at Jenbach, the station the operator describes by its three gauges: ÖBB's standard-gauge main line between Innsbruck and Kufstein, the Zillertalbahn's 760 millimetres, and the metre-gauge rack trains of the Achenseebahn. The narrow-gauge trains cross the Inn, turn south at Rotholz and enter the Zillertal at Strass.

Up the valley

The Zillertal is wide and flat at the bottom, and the line keeps to its floor all the way, between the Ziller, the main road and a chain of villages, with the mountains rising steeply on either side. Many of the stops are request halts. Long sections are now double track, and the half-hourly trains pass each other on the move rather than waiting in stations. At Fügen-Hart, one of the three staffed stations, the sawmill takes in the logs that the railway's freight trains bring up from Jenbach. Kaltenbach-Stumm has the road running between its station building and its platform, which passengers cross at a zebra crossing.

Beyond Aschau the line crosses the Ziller on an iron truss bridge of about 1900, now a protected monument, and reaches Zell am Ziller, whose station was rebuilt in 2025. It passes the brewery and runs on past the request stop at Laimach, home of the singers who carried "Silent Night" abroad, to Ramsau-Hippach, and ends at Mayrhofen, in a station rebuilt in 1968, under the mountains at the head of the valley. Buses leave from outside for the Tux valley and the Hintertux Glacier, and in summer for the Schlegeis reservoir.

The trains

Every everyday train is wheelchair accessible and carries a conductor. They are either diesel railcars or push-pull trains hauled by a diesel locomotive, and they are second class only. Between them they burn some 900,000 litres of diesel a year, and the operator plans to replace them with battery hybrid trains, charged partly from new overhead wires.

The steam train is hauled by one of three engines: No. 3; No. 4, the former Yugoslav 83-076, on loan to the line since 1994; and No. 5 Gerlos, built in 1930. Its coaches have wooden seats. For private charters the railway also has a buffet car, the Zillertaler Alpenstube, a barrel car, and the Kristallwaggon, fitted with 62,000 Swarovski crystals.

The Zillertalbahn runs every day, all year, about every half hour. The trains take 50 minutes from Jenbach to Mayrhofen, and stop on request at the smaller halts.

Jenbach to Mayrhofen

Mayrhofen to Jenbach

The steam train

In 2026 the steam train ran from 2 June to 24 September, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, once each way: from Jenbach at 10:42, arriving in Mayrhofen at 12:14, and back from Mayrhofen at 13:33, arriving in Jenbach at 15:02. It calls at ten of the stops on the way. The 2027 dates had not been published when this page was checked.

Getting to Jenbach

Jenbach is on the main line between Innsbruck and Kufstein, and Railjets and regional trains stop there; the Zillertalbahn's timetable is set to connect with ÖBB's.

Times as of October 2026, from the Zillertalbahn's timetable (opens in a new tab) valid from 14 June to 12 December 2026, checked against ÖBB's journey planner. The times from 13 December 2026 had not been published.

The everyday trains are part of the Tyrol transport association, the VVT, and are priced by its zones. A single from Jenbach to Mayrhofen covers seven zones and costs €11; children from six to fourteen pay €5.50, and up to four children under six travel free with each adult. Tickets are sold by the VVT app and online shop, at ticket machines, at the staffed stations in Jenbach, Fügen-Hart and Mayrhofen, and by the conductor on every train.

The steam train has its own fares, and VVT tickets are not valid on it: €25 single or €35.20 return from Jenbach to Mayrhofen, half for children from six to fifteen, a little less from Kaltenbach. The combined tickets, with the show dairy, the brewery or the Achenseebahn, are sold at the Welcome Center in Jenbach, at the staffed stations and on the train. Fares as of October 2026.

Interrail and Eurail do not cover the Zillertalbahn. It is listed by name among the Austrian trains the pass is not valid on, so pass holders buy an ordinary €11 ticket from Jenbach. The pass does cover ÖBB's trains to Jenbach.

The KlimaTicket Österreich does cover it. Austria's annual all-network ticket is valid on all scheduled public transport, and the Zillertalbahn's everyday trains are part of the Tyrol transport association; the regional KlimaTicket Tirol is valid too. Neither covers the steam train, which falls under the ticket's exclusion of nostalgia and tourist trains.

For this line alone a pass is not worth buying: the whole trip costs €11 each way. A pass pays only when the Zillertal is one stop on a longer journey through Austria.

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

The Zillertal is a valley of villages rather than sights, and the best of it is reached by getting off the train and going up. These six run from the lower valley to the glaciers at its head, three of them by bus from the stations at Zell am Ziller and Mayrhofen.

Mayrhofen, at the end of the line, is the obvious base, with the cable cars and buses into the mountains. Zell am Ziller, about ten minutes back down the valley, is the quieter choice, with the brewery and the church on its doorstep.

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