In a burst of fairly unusual spontaneity, I traversed the length of the WH-inscribed portion of Semmering Railway twice in both directions on consecutive days in December of 2016. I was spending a week and a half in Vienna and one day, being somewhat tired of the city, I got myself a ticket on a slow train to Mürzzuschlag and back.

It is hard to appreciate the magnificence of a railway from inside a railcar. You get to see beautiful landscapes outside the window; you only get glimpses of the tunnel entrances and the viaducts where they bookend the curves. That does very little to help you appreciate the ingenuity of human enterprise in building a transportation route across mountain terrain. Having read Clyde's review, I recognize that taking a car along the railway is the only proper way to "see" it.

The railway museum in Mürzzuschlag is open on very limited schedule in the winter, so I did not linger in town. Instead, on the return leg, I got off the train at Semmering proper for a walk around the village. It was beautifully covered in snow and surprisingly nearly deserted, although I eventually worked my way to the resorts area which was marginally livelier. There is not really anything of significant note in Semmering, although I came upon a viewpoint or two that allowed me to take middling pictures of far-away viaducts with high focal length. Semmering station is the main highlight itself, with a WH plaque among the ensemble that includes a fountain and a historic railway car.

Next day, I decided to go to Graz (which was not originally part of the plan), so I jumped on a fast train to go there and back. The fast train actually slows down on the mountain stretches (but does not make local stops except for Semmering). The modern comforts of an intercity train make proper appreciation of this feat of engineering even less likely.