About this journey

The journey begins at Zagreb Glavni kolodvor, Croatia's principal passenger railway station and a protected cultural monument. Designed by Hungarian MÁV architect Ferenc Pfaff and opened on 18 August 1892, the Neoclassical building stretches 186.5 metres along its façade, its symmetrical composition and allegorical sculptures reflecting the ambitions of a MÁV-financed project that was authorised in 1890 with the City of Zagreb donating land for its construction. In 2006 the station recorded 27,325,000 passengers, the highest annual figure in its history.

From Zagreb the line runs northeast toward Bjelovar, a city whose origins are strikingly deliberate: it was founded in 1756 as a planned military centre of the Varaždin Generalate, laid out to a strict grid by Baron Philipp Lewin von Beck. Bjelovar sits on a plateau in the southern part of the Bilogora range at 135 metres above sea level, and the low rolling hills of that range — averaging 150–200 metres in height — define the approach to the city. The railway's strategic importance here is long-established; Allied forces bombed the line at Bjelovar on several occasions during the Second World War. The journey thus moves between two places shaped by Habsburg planning: an imperial showpiece station built to project connectivity, and a garrison city built to project control.