About this journey

Košice station, whose current building has been in place since 1973, stands as the eastern terminus of Line 180, the Košice–Žilina railway forming Slovakia's main east–west rail corridor. The station's railway history stretches back to 14 August 1860, when the Miskolc–Košice railway first opened, linking the city with what is now Hungary. Line 180 also forms part of Pan-European Corridor Va, a route connecting Venice in Italy with Kyiv in Ukraine.

The journey northwest along Line 180 is operated by Železničná spoločnosť Slovensko (ZSSK), Slovakia's national passenger operator, aboard a ZSSK 350 "Gorilla" Škoda train. The line climbs toward the Western Carpathians as it approaches its destination, where the High Tatras mountain range comes into view.

Poprad-Tatry station, opened on 8 December 1871 as part of the Žilina–Poprad section of the Košice–Bohumín Railway, serves as a gateway to the High Tatras. The station became a junction in 1889 with the commissioning of the first section of the Poprad-Tatry–Plaveč branch railway, and a metre gauge connection to the High Tatras via Starý Smokovec followed on 20 December 1908. A modernisation costing SKK 858 million was carried out in 2006–2007. The route thus runs from one of Slovakia's oldest railway points to a mountain hub whose connections reach deep into the Tatras.