Seite - 160 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

160 ‘Thank God, this is the Great War!’ operations in such a way that success would be achieved as quickly as possible. The most difficult task was to coordinate the war scenarios with each other. It was not until the 1880s that work began in Austria-Hungary on driving forward the construction of the railways in a way that also conformed to military strategy guide- lines. Responsible for the planning work was the railway office of the Imperial and Royal General Staff. Sometimes, its requests were taken into account  – and sometimes not. Lack of money was one of the main reasons for the slow progress. Another was the geography. To the east of Lviv (Lemberg), there were hardly any more serviceable railway lines, and to the east of Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), the tracks ran close to the Russian border and in the event of war threatened to be interrupted rapidly. As far as Lviv, 108 trains could be run daily, while to the east of the city, that number dwindled to just 45.370 Finally, in the decade before the First World War, updated operational scenarios were supplemented by ever more detailed railway plans. However, despite the assurances from the railway office of the General Staff that they were keeping pace with the times, in reality, there was no question of this being the case. Not least, the zealous pursuit of secrecy meant that while the officers of the railway office developed their plans, no experts were called in from the civilian area. This was also quite difficult, since the Dual Monarchy had two railway ministries, as well as the Imperial and Royal Finance Ministry responsible for Bosnia-Herzegovina, which in both halves of the Empire and in Bosnia preserved the sovereignty of the state over all railways and, as a second important task, monitored the state of construction and operation of the state and private railways. In the event of war, however, priority was in any case to be given to what was prescribed by the Imperial and Royal War Ministry, and not what was planned by the railway ministries, the Imperial and Royal Finance Ministry or any of the railway administrations. In the Austrian half of the Empire alone, there were 15 ad- ministrative bodies for the state railway, however. And the whole structure only looked orderly and logical on paper,371 with eight lines extending outwards from Vienna in a star formation. The ‘Westbahn’ led to Salzburg and Bavaria ; the ‘Franz-Josefs-Bahn’ led to Bohemia, with an extension to Cheb and Prague ; the ‘Nordwestbahn’ led to Znojmo (Znaim) and Hradec Králové (Königgrätz) with a connection to Saxony and Berlin ; the ‘Ostbahn’ led to Brno (Brünn) and Kolín and again via Prague to Dresden and Ber- lin ; the ‘Nordbahn’ led to Silesia (Schlesien), Bohumín (Oderberg) and on to Kraków (Krakau), Lviv and the Bukovina region ; then the route to Budapest via Marchegg and Bratislava (Pressburg) ; a seventh line to Budapest via Bruck/Leitha ; and finally, the ‘Südbahn’ to Trieste (Triest) which  – even though it was one of the most important connections  – was still privately owned. There were therefore seven lines that led from the interior of the Habsburg Monarchy to the deployment zones in Galicia, which were single-track in their end sections, and of which two led through the Carpathians. From Budapest, a single functioning track led to Lviv via Medzilaborce (Mezőlaborcz). The