Corridors of Modernity and Power. Revolutions in Transport, Mobility and Communications. The middle of the 19th century marks a turning point from pre-modern transport to a modern one, the latter characterised by the use of steam power. This paradigm change is generally known as the “transport revolution”. However, even before then, technological and organisational reforms had resulted in substantial modernisation, including the introduction of fast mail coaches in 1823. Especially in the last third of the 19th century, the Austrian State used transport and communications as a means of infrastructural power to penetrate the country and its subjects, first only along the railway and telegraph lines and the important roads, which can be conceived of as “corridors of modernity and power”, then gradually covering the entire territory. On the regional level, the estates’ influence on transport issues had been largely reduced by the end of the 18th century, but a hundred years later, Lower Austria, like the state himself, increasingly sought to improve local transport conditions.