Prater Liliputbahn

The Prater Liliputbahn is a narrow-gauge light railway in Vienna’s Prater park. The 4-kilometre loop runs through the green heart of the city’s oldest recreation ground and past the Wurstelprater amusement park. Built in 1928 and extended in 1933, it is one of the few miniature railways in the world still carrying passengers every season from March to October. The line uses 381-millimetre gauge track, the same size chosen by Chief Engineer Martens in 1923 for the locomotives built by Krauss & Company. Every hundred metres along the route white-painted milestones mark the distance. The railway is worth the journey for its working steam and diesel locomotives. Two original 4-6-2 Pacific steam engines, numbered 1 and 2, still run in summer. A third steam engine, ordered in 1942, was withdrawn and scrapped, but its boiler survives as a static display. Four diesel engines provide year-round service, and in 2018 an experimental hydrogen-powered locomotive named Hydro-Lilly joined the fleet. All diesel engines now burn recycled vegetable oil from Prater restaurants, making the railway carbon-neutral. A visitor finds a double-track line with four stations. Prater Hauptbahnhof, inside the amusement park, serves as the railway’s headquarters and depot. Rotunde station links the line to Vienna’s tram network, while Schweizerhaus Luftburg station opened in 2011 beside two popular restaurants. The western terminus at Ernst-Happel-Stadion sits among trees beside the city’s largest stadium. Standard coaches have sixteen seats in four compartments, and a few have been adapted for wheelchairs.