About this journey

Čapljina station sits in the lower Neretva valley, where the river begins carving its path northward through the limestone ranges of Bosnia and Herzegovina. From here the railway follows the Neretva upstream for much of the journey — a route whose origins stretch back to the Austro-Hungarian administration that took control of the territory after the 1878 Berlin Congress. The original line opened as a narrow-gauge railway of 760 mm, the full Metković–Sarajevo route complete by 1 August 1891.

The engineering demands along this corridor are considerable. The 194.6-km route contains 106 tunnels with a combined length of 36.6 km, and 71 bridges totalling 3.7 km. Through the Neretva canyon between the Prenj and Čvrsnica mountains, the line passes reservoirs formed by hydroelectric dams that permanently submerged sections of the original narrow-gauge alignment. Beyond the canyon the railway climbs toward Ivan Mountain, where gradients once reached 60 per thousand and engineers laid a third Abt cogwheel rail; a 3,223-metre tunnel, completed in the interwar period, allowed the cogwheel to be partially abolished on 9 April 1931. The service on this journey uses a Talgo VII consist, part of the Talgo-operated passenger fleet that has served the line since 2010. Sarajevo main station, the journey's end, was opened ceremonially in 1953 and declared a national monument in 2016.