About this journey

Štrbské Pleso station sits at the upper end of one of Slovakia's most distinctive railways: a metre-gauge rack line that climbs down through the High Tatras to the main-line junction at Štrba. The line first opened on 30 July 1896, built under the management of Emil Várnai and the Košice–Bohumín Railway, making it one of the earliest mountain railways in the region. In 1968, plans for a renewed rack railway were drawn up in connection with the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1970 held at Štrbské Pleso. The line was later closed for renovation on 6 July 2020, with buses substituting for trains during the works, before reopening with a new fleet of Stadler 495.95 units — the same class operated here in June 2024.

The ZSSK 495.95 vehicles are capable of running in both adhesive and rack mode, a flexibility that also allows them to operate on the Tatra Electric Railway, which shares the station at Štrbské Pleso via a track connection. At the lower end, Štrba station has served as a railway junction since the rack line opened in 1896; the station itself dates to 8 December 1871, when the Žilina–Poprad section of the Košice–Bohumín Railway was commissioned. Štrba is the highest point on that standard-gauge main line, making the transfer between mountain rack railway and lowland corridor a meeting of two very different railway worlds.