About this journey

Sarajevo main station, whose functionalist building was opened in 1953 to a design led by Czechoslovak architect Bedřich Hacar, stands at the northern end of one of the most demanding railways in the Balkans. The Sarajevo–Ploče line has its origins in the Austro-Hungarian administration that followed the Berlin Congress of 1878; the first section opened on 14 May 1885, and the full route from Metković to Sarajevo was completed on 1 August 1891. That original line was built to the Bosnian narrow gauge of 760 mm and required a rack-and-pinion system on the climb over Ivan Mountain, where gradients reached 60 per thousand. The current standard-gauge route carries that engineering tradition forward: 106 tunnels totalling 36.6 km and 71 bridges totalling 3.7 km thread through terrain where the minimum curve radius on the most difficult sections falls to just 250 m.

Beyond the Ivan sedlo tunnel, which at 3.23 km is the longest on the line, the railway descends into the Neretva canyon, tracing the river between the Prenj and Čvrsnica mountains and crossing it repeatedly. Hydroelectric development along the Neretva flooded parts of the original alignment, leaving Jablanica lake alongside the track. The line is electrified at 25 kV, 50 Hz — a system completed in May 1969 — and passenger services have run with Talgo trains since 2010. Čapljina, where this journey ends, is the final station operated by Željeznice FBiH before the Bosnian-Croatian border.