Austria's railway had to wait years for its own initials because a Swiss line had them
When Austria's national railway was founded in 1923, the obvious abbreviation ÖBB was already taken by a small Swiss line, the Oensingen-Balsthal-Bahn. So it called itself BBÖ instead. Only after the Swiss firm switched to other lettering could the reborn company claim ÖBB in 1947, the name it still uses.
Austria's railways trace back to the Nordbahn, whose 175th anniversary ÖBB celebrated in 2012. From 1882 the lines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were gradually nationalised, and after the empire broke apart following the First World War the Austrian remnant stayed in state hands. The independent BBÖ of 1923 took over those lines and the privately owned Southern Railway.
The company existed in two separate lives. After the 1938 Anschluss it was absorbed into the German Reichsbahn, and around 41% of the Austrian network was destroyed during the Second World War. Reformed in 1947, ÖBB rebuilt and pushed electrification, which had begun in 1912 but only became extensive in the 1950s. The last steam locomotive in regular standard-gauge service retired in 1978. In 2012 chief executive Christian Kern opened an exhibition on the railway's role under Nazi rule, calling it the darkest chapter of the company's history.
Today ÖBB is wholly owned by the Republic of Austria, reorganised into a holding company with separate passenger, freight and infrastructure arms, and it also runs Liechtenstein's railways. Its infrastructure arm manages 9,740 km of track, 247 tunnels and 6,207 bridges, plus hydroelectric stations to power the network. In 2013 it carried 469 million passengers, 235 million of them by bus.
Passengers seem happy: 2018 Eurobarometer surveys ranked Austrian satisfaction with punctuality, reliability and frequency among the best in the EU. Under its Nightjet brand, ÖBB runs Europe's largest fleet of night trains. The Semmering section of its Southern Railway is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and big projects include the Koralm Railway and base tunnels under the Semmering and the Brenner.
Source: Austrian Federal Railways
