About this journey

The journey begins at Belgrade Centre station — known as Prokop — which took over Belgrade's main rail traffic on 1 July 2018 when the historic former Main Station was closed. That older terminus, built between 1882 and 1885 to designs by architect Dragutin Milutinović, had defined Serbian rail for well over a century: the first train departed from it on 1 September 1884, and by 1888 it had become a stop on the Orient Express route. Its construction followed Serbia's recognition as an independent state at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, after which the great powers required Serbia to build a national railway.

Leaving Belgrade, the route passes through Novi Beograd station, whose 450-metre elevated platform — cast from 25,000 cubic metres of prestressed concrete — first received trains in December 1969. Once a secondary stop, Novi Beograd had grown by July 2023 to handle 180 trains on workdays, making it the busiest station in Serbia. From there the line heads southwest toward Mali Zvornik on the Drina river, tracing a course through central Serbia with the HŽPP Class 2044 locomotive. The contrast between Belgrade's layered railway history and the quieter country that opens beyond the capital gives this three-hour journey much of its character.