20 Euros Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway

The Kaiser Ferdinands Nordbahn, inaugurated in 1837, was the first steam-powered railway in the Austrian Empire and among the earliest on the European continent. Its construction was privately financed — primarily by Salomon Mayer von Rothschild — after the imperial court initially declined to fund it, a decision Vienna would quietly reverse as rail fever swept the continent through the 1840s.

This coin is part of Austria's long-running "Railways" commemorative series. The Nordbahn's original northern terminus at Bochnia was never completed as planned; the line was eventually nationalized in 1906.