About this journey

Celje station, erected in 1846, stands on one of Central Europe's earliest main lines: the first Vienna–Trieste service passed through on 27 April 1846, making Celje an early node on the Habsburg imperial trunk route. The city grew at the confluence of the Savinja, Hudinja, Ložnica, and Voglajna rivers, and the hillside silhouette of Upper Celje Castle recalls its origins as the Roman municipium Claudia Celeia.

From Celje the Lavanttalbahn branch heads northwest toward the Šalek Valley, covering roughly 25 km to Velenje. The line functions as an industrial lifeline rather than a passenger artery: on weekdays up to 15 trains per day connect the valley to Celje, but only four run on Saturdays and none at all on Sundays, so an August cab ride offers a relatively rare leisure perspective on a route built around the coalfield. Velenje itself was purpose-built as a socialist model city in the 1950s, its central square opened on 20 September 1959. The Velenje Coal Mine, which opened in 1875 and has produced over 260 million tons of coal, defines the city's identity and explains the railway's existence — a journey from a Roman river-crossing that became a Habsburg rail hub to a mid-twentieth-century mining town, filmed aboard a Stadler LP 610.