Classic route
Railjet
Vienna → Budapest · Austria · Hungary
Railjet in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 243 km
- Fastest time
- 2 h 20 min
- Average speed
- 104 km/h
- Top speed
- 230 km/h
- Operator
- ÖBB · MÁV
- Train
- Railjet
- Countries
- Austria, Hungary
- In service since
- 2008
- Runs
- hourly (Railjet + EuroCity)
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Follows the old Orient Express alignment down the Danube plain: centre to centre faster than any flight.
The Habsburg main line between the empire’s twin capitals now belongs to Railjets and EuroCitys, lapping the 243 km across the Kisalföld plain in about two and a half hours. Trains slip out past the Carnuntum Roman country, cross into Hungary at Hegyeshalom (once an Iron Curtain checkpoint, now passed at line speed) and call at Győr’s baroque centre before Budapest swallows the line at Kelenföld. The terminus is Keleti’s grand 1884 hall, its façade crowned by statues of Watt and Stephenson.
How this line was checked
- The 189 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 11965670 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 96.5% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 6 m); the longest stretch away from it is 6 km
- Checked against the running timetable via Transitous: our line sits under 100 m from the shape of EC 145
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Vienna Hauptbahnhof departure
- Danube plain past Carnuntum
- Hegyeshalom — the old Iron Curtain crossing
- Győr’s baroque centre
- Budapest-Keleti’s 1884 façade
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More train routes in Austria · Hungary.
Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Budapest → Vienna · Vienna → Budapest.