The Last Night Shift
by WernerK · 18 June 2026 · Biography & Memoir
A retired train driver recalls his last night shift – four runs Vienna–St. Pölten, thick fog, and the moment approaching Vienna when he knew it was over. A quiet final sentence about his late wife.
March 14, 2018 was not a special day, as far as I can tell. Thursday. I still remember going to the Spar at lunch to pick up two rolls and eating one of them standing up because I was running late, and then there was a thermos of coffee on the table that my wife Gerda had put out without me asking her to, she always did that, ever since I'd known her. At half past nine in the evening I went to the depot, the 2112 was already waiting, Vienna Westbahnhof towards St. Pölten and back, then once more, four runs in total, that had been the night shift routine for years. The driver who would have taken over from me was Rainer Gruber, a year younger than me, and when we handed over he patted me on the shoulder and said: last night, Werner, and I nodded because what do you say to that.
What surprised me was the fog. From Penzing into Hütteldorf it was so thick that I only saw the platform at twenty metres, and even though you know this, thirty years you know this, it felt different that time. Or I perceived it differently, I'm not quite sure. I know the route by heart, I don't need to see it, every curve, every small gradient, every spot where the power sometimes flickers in the damp, it sits in the body and not in the head. Still, that night I braked more slowly than necessary at every station, for no reason.
Around four in the morning, on the last run back to Vienna, approaching Hütteldorf I thought: that's it now. Not with sadness or relief, simply as a statement, like closing a book. Thirty-eight years, 4.2 million kilometres, a colleague worked that out for me once, it's roughly ten times to the moon and back, and I'll tell you honestly: that never mattered to me. What mattered was that the doors open at 23:47 when they're supposed to open. When I left the depot it was just after six, the first trams were already running, and Gerda was still asleep when I got home, I can tell from her breathing, I can still hear it today, even though there is no breathing anymore.
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