Koralm Railway

2025-12-1210:50317197infrastruktur.oebb.at

A fast and safe service between Styria and Carinthia: That’s the Koralm Railway. It’s part of the new Southern Line in Austria and one of the most important infrastructure projects in Europe.

Visualisation of a Railjet passing the Koralm Tunnel.

Crossing the Koralpe massif more quickly and with more comfort. That’s what the future of train travel from Graz to Klagenfurt looks like. With the Koralm Railway, you will arrive at your destination even quicker. The fastest connection will shrink from three hours to just 45 minutes. Western Styria and southern Carinthia can be reached even more easily – as can our neighbouring countries Hungary and Italy.

Koralm Railway connects Europe

The economy is also benefiting from the construction of the new Koralm Railway. As part of the new Southern Line, it is strengthening the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor in Europe. Transporting goods in Austria by train is becoming more attractive, which in turn is allowing our operations to remain competitive internationally. And the environment to breathe: Each tonne of freight moved by rail generates around 15 times less CO2 emissions than transporting it by lorry.

    • Shorter journey times
    • Better access to southern Austria
    • Twenty-three contemporary railway stations and stops
    • Economic stimuli and jobs in the region
    • Long-term relief for the environment
Finanziert von der Europäischen Union<br/>NextGenerrationEU

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Comments

  • By flowerthoughts 2025-12-1212:452 reply

    Actually, the tunnel itself was only 17 years:

    1998: Start of construction of the Koralm Railway

    2008: Start of construction of the Koralm Tunnel

    2018: Breakthrough Koralm Tunnel

    2020: Final Koralm tunnel breakthrough

    2025: This announcement (https://orf.at/stories/3414173/ in German)

    https://infrastruktur.oebb.at/en/projects-for-austria/railwa...

    • By usr1106 2025-12-138:24

      Yeah, the submitted page misses the real news: Ordinary traffic will start tomorrow, Sunday.

    • By alephnerd 2025-12-1214:372 reply

      Given the terrain and the amount of tunneling needed, completing such a project in 17 years isn't that bad.

      Seems software neckbeards on HN are equally as guilty of underestimating the difficulty of other people's work like the managers they complain about.

      • By flowerthoughts 2025-12-1217:36

        Yeah, and the last five years has not been drilling, but installing. The last year has been testing and tweaking (accordingt to the ORF article.)

        Seems like a great project outcome. Mostly within budget, no political chaos due to delays (AFAICT) and allowing several months for testing before announcing it open.

  • By buybackoff 2025-12-1213:132 reply

    Just yesterday B1M published an interesting video about the future longest tunnel between Lyon, France and Turin, Italy. It will be more than 50km, deeply below the Alps. The project has finally secured funding, from both countries and EU, and is on track.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFrr-L_BcC4

    • By sofixa 2025-12-1214:281 reply

      It would be brilliant. Currently the Paris-Milan train line is barely competitive with flying between the two; knocking off 2-3 hours from the trip would make it around 4 hours in total, which is very competitive with flying (1h30 flight, but both CDG and Malpensa are big airports far outside the city, with significant time wasted getting to them, through security, etc). And of course it would be massive for Lyon - Turin, and Lyon - Milan too, where flying wouldn't even make sense any more.

    • By seqastian 2025-12-1214:301 reply

      Another one between Italy, Austria and by extension Germany is scheduled for 2032 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel

      • By ChrisMarshallNY 2025-12-1214:495 reply

        Isn't Italy a little geologically unstable?

        I'd be a bit nervous, going through a long tunnel, in a region known for vulcanism and earthquakes.

        • By gunzel412 2025-12-1222:371 reply

          Let me introduce you to the Seikan Tunnel [1] between the islands of Honshu and Hokkaido in Japan, 53.85km with 23.3km of that under the sea.

          [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel

          • By ChrisMarshallNY 2025-12-1222:39

            Now, that’s scary. I do know that the Japanese have the world’s best anti-earthquake architecture (because they need it), but it’s still scary.

        • By bobthepanda 2025-12-1310:03

          Tunnels are actually pretty safe in earthquakes, Japan for example is criss crossed with them.

          A tunnel is actually the least likely to shake; if you shake a jello with fruit inside it, the surface moves a lot but the interior fruit won’t move all that much.

        • By eCa 2025-12-1216:221 reply

          The 57 km Gotthard Base Tunnel has been in operation since 2016. There's also a 3km long tunnel between France and Italy that opened in 1882. Nowadays there's probably hundreds of 1km+ tunnels in the Alps.

          • By ChrisMarshallNY 2025-12-1216:371 reply

            Well, from the other responses, it seems the Italian Alps are pretty stable.

            • By tacone 2025-12-1219:42

              Yes but we're drilling holes through them to fix that.

        • By whizzter 2025-12-1215:36

          Italy isn't a puny country, it's over 1000kms between Sicily and the Alps (Like LA to Albuquerque), seems the fault lines reaches northern Italy (about 100km from the alps) but the amount of larger quakes seems smaller there.

        • By AnimalMuppet 2025-12-1215:06

          It is unstable, but (I think) more so in the south. I'm not sure that the Alps region is unstable.

  • By groestl 2025-12-1214:18

    Booked a trip yesterday, without knowing this has happened. ~1h off my usual trip time, which I got accustomed to in the last two decades. It's extremely awesome!

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