Negotiations on the Railway Connection Between Austria and Bavaria

Bozen, 14 October. We have repeatedly turned our attention to the Tyrolean railway question and were recently able to report on the prosperous progress of the matter and the lively interest it has met with everywhere. Convinced that the state administration will duly consider the deeply invested interests of our crown land, we also cherished the hope that no difficulties would arise from its side for the enterprise; yet, for various reasons, we did not dare predict that direct support from it was to be expected. Now, however, an article in "Austria", which draws from official sources, disabuses us in a manner as pleasant as it is surprising: "On the connection of the Austrian and Bavarian railways." We learn from it that the government's foresight has already taken the initiative in the matter and drawn it into the sphere of its own responsibilities. What hopes regarding the speedy execution of the railway line through Tyrol are attached to this requires no discussion; we reproduce here the article itself, which contains so much that is comforting for our future, and whose views we fully share:

Connection of the Austrian and Bavarian Railways.

Vienna, 9 October. At the foundation of the Austrian state railway system, the connection with Southern Germany, and primarily with Bavaria by means of a Western Railway, was already contemplated. The construction of the Southern and Northern Railways, which were most urgently required by the interests of the monarchy, was swiftly begun and continued. Negotiations were also opened with Bavaria concerning the connection of the Austrian state railway to the Bavarian system; the earth-shattering events that ensued, however, were not suited to advancing their progress. Once order was restored, the moment appeared to have arrived when the Austrian government could once again devote its full attention to these momentous negotiations. In the meantime, public opinion in the cities most directly affected had seized upon the subject and, with a correct appreciation of the great benefits that must accrue to the commerce of Southern Germany and the Austrian border towns through a connection with the Austrian lines, worked toward the realization of the railway sections situated in Bavarian territory in the direction of Austria. The Bavarian government was able to find therein the occasion and impetus to undertake the construction of a railway line initially in the direction from Munich to Salzburg. The favorable success of this undertaking was, however, contingent upon the participation of the Austrian government by means of the continuation of this line on Austrian territory, which is why the Bavarian government submitted an inquiry on the matter.

As we have just learned, the Austrian state administration, seizing the right moment, has now decided to induce the Bavarian government to undertake the construction of the railway from Munich to the Salzburg border by declaring that in this case the line would be continued on the Austrian side as far as Linz. — This commitment was, however, tied to a condition—certainly to be fulfilled readily on the Bavarian side—which also directs the advantages of this important railway connection toward another crown land. Namely, the Austrian government requested that Bavaria, in routing the aforementioned railway line from Munich to Salzburg, which touches Rosenheim, construct from there a branch line to the nearby Tyrolean border near Kufstein, which the Austrian government would then pledge to continue through the Inn Valley to Innsbruck.

It requires no further proof how momentous the execution of this double railway construction will prove for the revival of traffic between Southern Germany and Austria. Three commercially active cities—Salzburg, Linz, and Innsbruck—are thereby brought into direct railway connection with a large part of Germany, the effects of which are extended by the course of the Danube as far as Vienna and Hungary. But Innsbruck and Linz are not yet the destined termini of the great German railway network. The force of circumstances and the urgent impulse of interests strive toward the comprehensive connection of Southern Germany with the shores of the Adriatic Sea, the true starting point of world trade. Soon, we no longer doubt, the quiet valleys of Tyrol will be traversed by the steam-snorting locomotive; soon the latter will find its way over or through the Alps, just as the natural connection of the Salzburg–Linz line with the great Southern State Railway, hardly impeded by significant obstacles, must form of itself. Thus, attached to that momentous declaration of the Austrian government and to the cooperation of the Bavarian is a series of joyful hopes for the completion of one of the greatest tasks of our century: the conquest of space and time and the peaceful victory in the field of traffic through the creation of a railway network spanning all of Central Europe. For these hopes to be realized, however, it is essential that Ulm be connected with the Bavarian railways and that the connection of the Württemberg railways to the Baden lines take place; for only when Germany's great railway link reaches the Rhine basin in the south, as has already happened in the north, will the interests of Southern Germany be properly safeguarded and the purposes of the railway network fully achieved. (Austria.)