About this journey

Ljubljana railway station, whose main building was completed on 18 April 1848, stands as the departure point for one of Slovenia's oldest and most strategically important rail corridors. The line connecting Ljubljana and Maribor was built by the Austrian Empire as part of the Südliche Staatsbahn — the Austrian Southern Railway — which reached Maribor in 1844 and extended to Ljubljana in 1849. That same corridor now forms part of Pan-European Corridor V, linking Koper through both cities toward Budapest.

The infrastructure carrying the journey carries visible traces of those inherited systems. Slovenian Railways uses 3 kV DC electrification, a voltage adopted from Italian Ferrovie dello Stato on lines electrified in 1936 and retained across all subsequent Slovenian lines for compatibility. On double-track sections, trains run on the left — a Habsburg-era convention that sets Slovenian Railways apart from the rest of the former Yugoslav network. The train making this journey is the SŽ Class 310 Pendolino, operating as an ICS service on which seat reservation is obligatory and included in the ticket price. At the northern end, Maribor station dates to 1844 and was upgraded in 2021, closing a journey whose infrastructure spans nearly two centuries.