The first proposal was submitted in August 1881 by a consortium of British engineers including James Clark Bunten and Joseph Fogerty, which reached the stage of obtaining a concession on 25 January 1883. It included a central station on the Danube Canal as well as a two-track belt railway with branches to all Viennese stations and to Hietzing. The route of the approximately long ring was planned along the Danube Canal and Wien River as an elevated railway on iron viaducts, and on the Gurtel partly as a viaduct and partly as an open or covered trench. The branch lines would all be built as elevated railways, mostly on viaducts. However the concession was extinguished by the Austrian government on 14 March 1886 because financial proof of the estimated cost of 719 million Austrian crowns could not be provided.