About this journey

Jesenice station, rebuilt between 1953 and 1955 in a stark modernist style after Allied air raids destroyed the earlier structure in early 1945, marks the northern starting point of the Bohinjska železniška proga — the Bohinj Railway. The station became a major junction in 1906, the year the Bohinj and Karawanks lines were completed, though its origins on the Tarvisio–Ljubljana Railway reach back to 1870.

The railway itself was constructed by Austria-Hungary between 1900 and 1906 as part of the Neue Alpenbahnen project, intended to reinforce the connection between Central Europe and the port of Trieste. The political impulse had been building since 1869, when the Trieste Chamber of Commerce petitioned Emperor Franz Joseph in the wake of the Suez Canal's opening. The line's most demanding engineering lies beneath the Julian Alps: the Bohinj Tunnel extends 6,327.3 metres under Mount Kobla, which rises to 1,498 metres. The section between Podbrdo and Grahovo alone required eight bridges, thirty-three culverts, and six tunnels to negotiate avalanche slopes and unstable ground. During the First World War the line carried the majority of Austrian military supplies to the Isonzo Front; after 1945 it faded into relative obscurity before Slovenia's EU accession in 2004 and Schengen entry in 2007 restored its importance as a transit corridor. The journey ends at Solkan, where the Solkan Bridge crosses the Soča River on an 85-metre stone arch — the longest stone railway arch in the world.