About this journey

Jesenice station sits in the Sava Dolinka valley, within reach of both the Austrian border to the north and the Italian border to the west. The station building itself — a stark modernist box faced in white marble and featuring hexagonal windows — was rebuilt between 1953 and 1955 to replace a structure destroyed by Allied air raids in early 1945. From here the freight locomotive Brižita SŽ 363 sets out southward on the 64.5 km single-track line to Ljubljana, electrified at 3 kV DC.

The line was opened on 14 December 1870 by the Imperial and Royal Crown Prince Rudolf railway company, its concession granted the previous year in 1869. In 1884 a financial crisis forced nationalisation, and the Imperial Royal Austrian State Railways took over and modernised the route. By 1906 Jesenice had grown into a significant junction, where the Bohinj Railway to Trieste and the Karawanks Railway to Villach converged as part of the New Alpine Railways project. The cross-border section beyond Jesenice toward Tarvisio closed in 1967 on the Italian side and in 1969 on the Slovenian side, leaving this Sava valley corridor as the line's surviving stretch. The run ends at Ljubljana station, the Slovenian capital's main railway terminus, where the line follows the valley it has traced since Jesenice down to the lowlands of central Slovenia.