Opponitz power station

The Opponitz power station stands beside the Ybbs in Opponitz, Lower Austria. It is a hydro-electric plant owned by the City of Vienna and built to supply the capital’s new electric railway. The river drops 115 metres along an 11.3-kilometre stretch of gorge between Göstling and Opponitz, and the works harness that fall through a series of tunnels and pipes. The machine hall sits in the Schwarzenbach district, its steep roof and tall windows rising above the valley floor. The plant is worth reaching because it was the first large hydro scheme built by the City of Vienna after the First World War. Construction began in 1922 and the first turbine ran in 1924, supplying current for the Vienna Electric City Railway. Three Francis turbines, ordered in 1912 for a Canadian project but delayed by war, were finally installed here. A 110-kilovolt line carried the power 140 kilometres to Vienna, crossing the Danube on a single day in November 1924. Inside the machine hall three turbines drive generators beneath a high roof. A narrow-gauge railway once ran through the tunnels to bring men and materials to the work faces. Outside, the Ybbs flows through a deep gorge lined with concrete walls and steel pipes. The power station’s brick façade and tall windows show the clean lines of early 20th-century industrial design.