Hello it's the 27th of March 2018
I am in Vienna the capital Austria, and I'm about to catch this train to go to this banknote
I've discovered I'm a bit jealous of people who live in Vienna.
Not only is it a fantastic city in itself, but you can hop on a train, head southwest for just 45 minutes
And you're here.
Try doing exactly that same thing in London, and you'll end up in Basingstoke.
Instead I'm in Semmering and I've come here to explore some beautiful Alpine mountain scenery and
find out more about the story of the railway that goes right through the middle of it.
But first some music: take it away train
Nice
Now this area is hiking heaven. we're almost 900 meters up in the Alps,
and I've been told the trails around here have some spectacular views.
I'm aiming for the 20-Schilling Blick, a view that was made famous after appearing on Austria's old 20 shilling banknotes.
Looks like it's this way.
To get there, I'm taking a trail called the Bahnwanderweg
which follows the Semmering railway as it cuts through the mountains on a string of viaducts and tunnels.
Construction started on the line in 1848.
1848!!!
Stephenson's rocket is still a teenager,
there's no electrical equipment, there are no cars, everything has to be transported by horse,
it's 20 years before the Settle to Carlisle line even goes over the Pennines... and they've built THIS!
Now at this point of the hike you're inside a huge loop of the railway line, and I can only apologise for this reference, but...
as you walk above the valley in the shadow of the trees you'll find this lookout point and if you climb to the top
you'll literally be living in a train spotters paradise.
What you're surrounded by here is the engineering genius of Carl von Ghega.
Here he is on the other side of the twenty shilling note.
Born in Venice in 1802 to Albanian parents he was involved in the construction of Austria's first-ever railways,
and by the age of 40 he was entrusted with the planning of the entire Austrian state railway.
It was Ghega who had the vision to build a line over the Alps and the engineering skills to make it happen.
There's a museum dedicated to Ghega a little further down the trail next to one of his most impressive structures - the Kalte Rinne viaduct.
Walking through this rugged terrain you really begin to appreciate how tough it must have been to build a railway in such a hostile environment.
And all this at a time when no existing train would have been able to cope with it.
No one had ever built a train capable of handling these kinds of gradients and curves, because no one had ever needed to.
A competition was held to find a design
that would weigh less than 14 tons and maintain a speed of 11.5 kilometers an hour.
Four companies entered the contest and amazingly all four locomotives completed the trial successfully.
Problem was in practice none of them proved reliable. In the end a fifth design was used by Wilhelm Freiherr von Engerth.
Now here's the science: his innovation was to incorporate the locomotive
and its tender into one frame, with articulated rear wheels.
This put more weight on the driving wheels than in a traditional tender engine and therefore increased traction and adhesion
with the articulation
allowing it to still negotiate tight curves.
Back to the trail and I've now reached the 20-Schilling Blick.
There's a helpful information board with a picture of what the banknote used to look like.
Unfortunately the weather isn't great today. It's a bit gray and misty,
but you have to admit: it's still a pretty good view.
From here the hiking trail loops back on itself to give you a closer look at some of the lines beautifully constructed viaducts.
Ghega had them built out of local stone with the aim of blending in and complementing the landscape.
I don't know about you, but I reckon you did a decent job.
And they're not just beautiful, they're incredibly well engineered, which means they still carry trains today after more than a hundred and sixty years.
This is the Unterer Adlitzgraben viaduct, and this is the Kalte-Rinne.
If you like trains,
I recommend bringing spare underwear.
(The state of that football pitch!)
As we enter the village of Breitenstein we're now coming towards the end of my hike.
This is one of many villages that grew as a direct result of the railway.
We don't even think about it now,
but in the 1850s very few people would ever go into the mountains.
The only way of getting there was on your own two feet, or if you're lucky you might convince a horse to take you.
The Semmeringbahn gave people access to the Alps and at the time it would have been an almost unique tourist experience.
In fact, this railway made a huge contribution to the growth of mountaineering and winter sports as something that people actually did.
If you'd like to explore the history of the Semmeringbahn and see these views for yourself, then I thoroughly recommend walking the Bahnwanderweg.
It's very easy to follow,
just look for these symbols on the signposts.
You can do the whole walk from Semmering to Breitenstein in about two and a half to three hours,
depending on how many photographs you want to take. If you like trains on the other hand, best book a week off work.
Thanks very much for watching I'll be doing more videos about travel trekking and transport,
so please subscribe if you'd like more of this kind of thing and I'll see you soon.