About this journey

Nova Gorica station stands at the edge of Transalpina Square, a place whose geometry has been shaped by borders as much as by railways. The station opened on 23 July 1906 as part of the Bohinj Railway, built by the Austro-Hungarian Empire to strengthen its connection to the Port of Trieste. That imperial ambition left Nova Gorica with a station building that would go on to survive World War I damage, the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, and the Wall of Gorizia that once divided the square between two states. When Slovenia joined the Schengen area in 2007, the wall's last traces were removed and the square was reunited. In 2025, Nova Gorica and Italian Gorizia together hold the European Capital of Culture title — described as Europe's first borderless Capital of Culture.

From Nova Gorica the line follows a route with historical roots in an earlier railway between Gorizia and Ajdovščina, a connection that predates the post-war border. The SŽ 813 unit covers the journey southeast toward Ajdovščina, tracing a corridor through the Vipava valley region. Nova Gorica itself was built from 1948 as a planned modernist town, designed by architect Edvard Ravnikar, after the peace treaty left the Soča and Vipava valleys without their traditional urban centre — a context the landscape outside the cab window quietly carries.