Already in 1847, the entrepreneur Carl Ganahl, later the main proponent of the railway construction in the Vorarlberg, recognised the importance of a railway line in the Vorarlberg, although there were many problems with this idea. No mountain railway, which would be needed to cross the Arlberg, had yet been built in Austria and a line with no connection to the Tyrolean areas seemed useless. Moreover, Vorarlberg was not an independent crown land of Austria-Hungary, and thus possessed no representatives in the Imperial Council (Reichsrat) in Vienna.