About this journey

Ploče station sits at the Croatian end of the Adriatic corridor, where the line immediately begins its long climb into the Dinaric interior. The railway follows the course of the Neretva river northward, crossing into Bosnia and Herzegovina toward Čapljina and Mostar. Its origins reach back to the Austro-Hungarian administration that followed the 1878 Berlin Congress, when construction of the first section — from Metković toward Mostar — began in the summer of 1884 and opened on 14 May 1885 as a 760 mm narrow-gauge line. The railway was later converted to standard gauge of 1435 mm, a process completed with the official opening of the new line on 26 and 27 November 1966.

Between Mostar and Konjic the line enters the Neretva canyon, threading between the Prenj and Čvrsnica mountains through terrain that demanded 106 tunnels totalling 36.6 km and 71 bridges totalling 3.7 km across the full route. The section between Bradina and Konjic alone accounts for 46 tunnels and 21 bridges, and the tightest curves reach a minimum radius of 250 m. The line is electrified at 25 kV, 50 Hz, a system completed in May 1969. Beyond the mountains the route descends toward Sarajevo, the terminus of pan-European Corridor Vc linking the Adriatic port of Ploče with Budapest — a journey that moves from coastal flatlands through one of the most engineering-intensive railways in the region.