Vienna Central Station

It should be the Hauptbahnhof near the Gurtel.

Vienna Central Station is Wien Hbf. ie, Hauptbahnhof. Wien Hbf is where you go to take the train to Prague (Praha hl. n), day or night trains.

And if you happen to book First Class, there's a really nice lounge at Wien Hbf (First was only €10 more for two of us to Budapest, so we splurged.)

Thanks so much everyone! Only 10 more Saturdays including today and we are off!! So excited!!!

Looked at my map again and the Hauptbahnhof just seems like it's on the wrong side of the city for Prague trains.

The station is fairly new, opened about 4 years ago. It is a through-station as opposed to an end-station.
Trains come and go from all directions without having to reverse directions.
End-stations typically are geographically located for the regions they serve.

It is a through-station as opposed to an end-station. Trains come and
go from all directions without having to reverse directions.
End-stations typically are geographically located for the regions they
serve.

Frankfurt (Main) HBF is an "end station" and I've always wondered why it was built that way considering it's one of the busiest rail stations in Europe. All trains have to reverse direction because the station acts like a terminal. I went to wikipedia to see if there were reasons for this design. They were baffled too.

"The station's terminal layout has posed some unique problems ever
since the late 20th century, since all trains have to change
directions and reverse out of the station to continue on to their
destination. This causes long turn-around times and places the
passengers in the opposite direction of where they had been sitting.
There have been several attempts to change this. The last project,
called Frankfurt 21, was to put the whole station underground, connect
it with tunnels also to the east, and so avoid the disadvantages of
the terminal layout. This would be financed by selling the air rights
over the area now used for tracks as building ground for skyscraper,
but this soon proved unrealistic, and the project was abandoned.

Frankfurt is the third-busiest railway station outside Japan and the
busiest in Germany."

Continental, stations were often originally built by a railway company that built a line from A to B, not connected to any other lines (because there weren't any other lines). They ended at the (then) edge of the city, as dead ends.

Later other lines were built and the station enlarged. Sometimes a totally different company built a line from B to C, with their own station on the other side of B, not connected to the first station. That is how Vienna, Frankfurt and many other cities developed. Now, 150 years later, Vienna has built one through station. Having trains route round the city to reach the one station is a lot more convenient than having passengers cross the city from one station to another.

Extreme cases are London or Paris with many stations. The problem has been partially solved for suburban trains by connecting the stations up with tunnels under the city connecting the suburban networks from both sides of the city, and working as an express limited stop métro within the city centre. This is the Paris RER, the S-Bahn in German speaking cities (Frankfurt, Vienna etc.) and Thameslink and Crossrail in London, the latter due to open this year.

Thanks, Chris.

Prior to Wien Hbf becoming operational, trains going to Prague from Vienna departed from Südbahnhof (the south station). Now with Wien Hbf trains that used to stop at Westbahnhof ( a lot of them) go directly to Wien Hbf.

If you're coming from the west (Germany, Salzburg, Wels, etc) and want to go to Westbahnhof, you need not have to go to Wien Hbf and backtrack by the tram or transferring with the U-Bahn to Westbahnhof.... get off at St Pölten, take regional train to Westbahnhof.

Much easier at St Pölten when encumbered with luggage.

If you're coming from the west (Germany, Salzburg, Wels, etc) and want to go to Westbahnhof, you need not have to go to Wien Hbf and backtrack by the tram or transferring with the U-Bahn to Westbahnhof.... get off at St Pölten, take regional train to Westbahnhof.

Much easier at St Pölten when encumbered with luggage.

Even easier: take the "green" Westbahn line from Salzburg (or subsequent stations in direction Vienna) to Vienna Westbahnhof.