About this journey

Novska station, with its 18 railway tracks, marks one of Croatia's more significant rail junctions, where the M103 line meets routes towards Zagreb via Sisak and eastward towards Belgrade. From here the M103 stretches 83.405 kilometres westward through the Sava River valley to Dugo Selo, forming an integral section of Pan-European Corridor X, the artery running from Salzburg and Ljubljana towards Skopje and Thessaloniki.

The line opened in 1897 and went on to carry the Orient Express from 1919 to 1977, lending this quiet single-tracked corridor a history out of proportion to its present appearance. Electrified at 25 kV 50 Hz AC overhead, it permits speeds of up to 60 km/h along the western section toward Dugo Selo and up to 80 km/h along the eastern section near Novska. By July 2024, when this journey was filmed, a major reconstruction programme — including the addition of a second parallel track along the entire route — was already scheduled to run through 2029, making this a document of the line in transition.

At Dugo Selo station the M103 meets the M102 and M201 railways connecting Zagreb and Budapest via Koprivnica, and the station sits at the convergence of both Pan-European Corridor X and Corridor Vb. The journey moves from a multi-track junction serving international freight and passenger services at Novska to a corridor interchange at Dugo Selo that ties Croatia into two of Europe's principal rail axes.