Not an Austrian, but your talking about "excuses for such slow ass trains" seems to be missing the fact that the Austrians are building two large rail tunnels:

The Semmering base tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmering_Base_Tunnel which will shorten travel between Vienna and Graz, and the Koralmbahn tunnel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koralm_Tunnel

Also, no Alps between Vienna and Graz? Have you looked out of the window? If you haven't, here is the map. The heights of the peaks are in meters, so 3x for feet:

https://mapy.cz/s/bokococuza

That is a bona fide mountainous terrain.