About this journey

The journey begins at Ljubljana railway station, whose building was completed on 18 April 1848, a year before the Austrian Southern Railway reached the city. That line, built by the Austrian Empire to link Vienna with Trieste, had already connected Maribor to the rail network in 1844, and the full corridor through to Ljubljana opened in 1849. Maribor station itself dates from that same year of 1844, making it one of the oldest in the region; it received a significant upgrade in 2021.

Northward from Ljubljana, the route follows the lines designated Dobova – Ljubljana and Zidani Most – Šentilj, forming part of Pan-European Corridor V, which links Koper and Ljubljana through Maribor toward Budapest. At Zidani Most, where the Sava-river line branches southeast toward Zagreb, the corridor turns north and continues toward Maribor. The SŽ Class 310 Pendolino covers the full distance in a journey of just under two hours. Slovenian Railways itself was established in 1991 from the Ljubljana division of the former Yugoslav Railways, and the network it inherited carries infrastructure stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century — a history that Ljubljana station is set to mark with a major expansion, costing around 167 million euros, planned for completion in 2026.