About this journey

The journey departs from Bratislava hlavná stanica, whose current building dates from 1905 and was designed by Ferenc Pfaff, the principal architect of the Hungarian State Railways. The station's history reaches further back to 1848, when its original structure served as terminus for lines from Vienna and Břeclav. A major reconstruction in 1960 reshaped the exterior into a markedly socialist aesthetic, giving the building the appearance it still carries today.

The route heads south-east through the agricultural lowlands of southern Slovakia toward Levice, running roughly parallel to the river Hron. The final portion of the journey follows a line whose origins date to the late nineteenth century: the section between Čata and Levice opened on 18 September 1887, having been preceded two years earlier by the northern stretch from Párkány to Čata, which opened on 1 June 1885. Following the Treaty of Trianon, the entire line passed from Hungary to Czechoslovakia. The Škoda Class 240 locomotive heads this service across a landscape of flat to gently rolling terrain, arriving at Levice station — a contrast to the busy urban terminus at Bratislava hlavná stanica, which handles around 60,000 passengers per day.