About this journey

Knin station sits beneath a medieval fortress that served as the royal residence of King Demetrius Zvonimir around 1080, and the town remains an important rail junction where routes toward Zagreb, Šibenik, and Zadar converge. From here, the journey follows the M604 line southward — specifically the Knin–Split section, historically known as the Dalmatian railway, which was built in 1888 and predates the Lika line to the north by decades.

The M604 carries a weight of recent history as well. Traffic on the line was severed in July 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence, and when Croatian forces completed Operation Storm in August 1995, the railway was found damaged along much of its length. The first passenger train to run the corridor after the war, carrying President Tuđman on 26 August 1995, was dubbed the Freedom Train. Today the route forms part of the 320 km M604 corridor linking Ogulin and Oštarije in the north to the Split terminus on the Adriatic coast.

Approaching Split, the line enters the city through a 1,893 m tunnel built when Split hosted the 1979 Mediterranean Games, emerging at the harbour-side terminus. The contrast between the fortress-crowned hills of Knin and the Adriatic waterfront at Split encapsulates the full geographic range of this single, unbroken railway line.