About this journey

Škrljevo station sits on the M202 railway, the 229-kilometre line that links Zagreb with Rijeka on the Adriatic coast. A branch, the M602, diverges here toward Bakar, while the main line continues inland through the Gorski Kotar highlands toward Karlovac and beyond. The M202 has its origins in 1865, when the first section opened between Zagreb and Karlovac; the extension to Rijeka followed on 6 September 1873, completing a route that became part of Pan-European corridor V branch B connecting Rijeka to Budapest.

Ownership passed through several hands — from the Austrian Southern Railway Company to the Hungarian Government in 1880, then to Yugoslav Railways after the First World War, and to Croatian Railways in 1991. Electrification came in stages between 1953 and 1970 under the 3 kV DC system, before the entire line was converted to the 25 kV AC national standard, with the final Moravice–Rijeka segment converted in December 2012. The journey ends at Ogulin, a town whose character is shaped by the Dobra River, which runs through its centre and disappears underground into a karst cave system beneath the town — a fitting boundary between the engineered certainty of the railway and the geological complexity of the Croatian interior.