About this journey

Divača station, which opened in 1857 as part of the Austrian Southern Railway's extension toward Trieste, sits at the point where the main Ljubljana–Trieste corridor meets the branch that heads south into Istria. From here the line runs via Prešnica and crosses from Slovenia into Croatia, a route laid down in 1876 to connect Vienna's empire with Pula, then Austria-Hungary's principal naval base on the Adriatic.

The strategic purpose of that 1876 line was clear: Pula's harbour had been chosen in 1859 as Austria's main naval base, and rail access was essential to supply it. The route passes through Buzet and Pazin before descending toward the southern tip of the Istrian peninsula. At journey's end, Pula is the largest city in Croatia's Istria County, with a population of 52,220 recorded in 2021. The contrast between the line's origins — built to serve imperial naval power — and its present role as a regional passenger corridor through a landscape that has passed through Austrian, Italian, Yugoslav, and now Croatian and Slovenian administration gives the journey a quietly layered character that the traction itself reflects: the SŽ Class 713/715 unit operating on infrastructure whose political geography has shifted repeatedly since the first trains ran.