About this journey

Ljubljana railway station, completed on 18 April 1848, is the departure point for this Alpine crossing. The line north through the Sava valley to Jesenice forms part of what was originally the Rudolfsbahn, opened on 14 December 1870 under a concession granted in 1869 to the Kaiserlich-königliche privilegierte Kronprinz Rudolf-Bahn Gesellschaft. Following a financial crisis, the railway passed into state hands in 1884 and was operated by the Imperial Royal Austrian State Railways. The Jesenice–Ljubljana section runs 64.5 km on a single-track line electrified at 3 kV DC, with only a short stretch near Ljubljana Šiška carrying double track.

At Jesenice the route reaches a historic junction: in 1906 the station became the meeting point of the Bohinj Railway and the Karawanks Railway to Villach, both built as part of the New Alpine Railways. The cross-border section toward Tarvisio was closed in 1969, so international services now continue to Villach via the Karawanks Railway. The ÖBB 1216 Siemens Taurus hauls the train across the Austrian border to Villach Hauptbahnhof, a major Alpine junction with twelve tracks — four of them sidings — and connections toward Vienna on the Southern Railway and toward Salzburg on the Tauern Railway, a fitting contrast to the single-track Slovenian valley line left behind.