About this journey

Oštarije sits at the junction where the electrified Zagreb–Rijeka main line hands trains over to the un-electrified interior, and it is here that the M604 — the Lika railway — begins its long descent into the Croatian hinterland. Construction of the line started in spring 1913, built southward from Ogulin by the firm Grünwald und Schiffer; at its peak in June 1914 some 14,000 workers were employed on the site. The 220 km single-track corridor remains the only operating rail link between continental Croatia and Dalmatia, and its difficult alignment required substantial reconstruction by 2004–2005 to ease the sharpest curves and steepest gradients and to install new signalling.

The ICN — a Bombardier/AdTranz class 7123 tilting unit — works south through the karst landscape of Lika toward Gračac, a station that has its own place in the line's history: the Gospić–Gračac section opened on 15 June 1922, three years before the full route to Knin and Split was complete. The approach to Gračac also carries an incidental footnote from the construction era: in October 1913, engineer Nikola Turkalj accidentally discovered the Cerovac caves while mapping the future alignment near the town. The journey across this sparsely settled plateau connects two ends of a line whose 320 km total length makes it one of Croatia's longest inland rail corridors.