About this journey

Ljubljana railway station, whose original building was completed on 18 April 1848, stands at the heart of a network shaped by imperial ambition: the Austrian Empire drove the Southern Railway through Ljubljana in 1849 to link Vienna with the port of Trieste. Slovenian Railways itself came into existence in 1991 from the Ljubljana division of former Yugoslav Railways. Today the station is mid-way through a major expansion costing around 167 million euros, with completion planned for 2026.

From Ljubljana the route forms part of Pan-European Corridor V, running northeast through Maribor and Pragersko before entering the Prekmurje region. The line connecting Ormož with Murska Sobota opened in 1924, while the Ormož–Hodoš section further east has a more complicated history: opened in 1907, it closed in 1968 and lay dormant for decades before being rebuilt between 1999 and 2001. The rebuilt Murska Sobota–Hodoš alignment follows a less winding course than the original and is designed for international trains travelling at up to 160 km/h. Electrification of the Pragersko–Hodoš corridor, using the 3 kV DC system standard across the Slovenian network, was completed in April 2016.

Hodoš is the only railway border crossing between Slovenia and Hungary, and the station marks a technical frontier as well as a national one: voltage changes here from Slovenia's 3 kV DC to Hungary's 25 kV AC system, requiring traction changes for trains continuing east along the corridor.