About this journey

Maribor railway station, erected in 1844, stands at the start of one of Slovenia's most historically significant regional lines. The Drava Valley Railway — known in German as the Drautalbahn — was built in 1863 to link Maribor with Carinthia, following the Southern Railway that had brought economic growth to the city in 1846. That single-track, non-electrified line once carried traffic onward to Klagenfurt and Villach, and branches later extended to Celje and Wolfsberg, making Dravograd an important railway junction and river port on the Drava. The line towards Villach via the Holmec border crossing ceased carrying traffic in 1965, and a branch from Dravograd to Velenje closed in 1968, leaving Maribor–Prevalje as the only remaining passenger service on the corridor.

The route follows the Drava valley northwest through a succession of stations before reaching Dravograd, where a 22 km section onward to the state border entered a major modernisation in 2024, partly prompted by natural-disaster damage in 2023, with EU funding of €86.6 million contributing to a total investment of €113.9 million and completion expected by mid-2026. The journey ends at Prevalje, set in a valley where the Meža River emerges from a narrow gorge, bounded by hills to the north and south — a town whose development was historically shaped by ironworking and processing industry.