About this journey

The journey begins at Zagreb Glavni kolodvor, a Neoclassical station building 186.5 metres long, designed by Hungarian architect Ferenc Pfaff and opened on 18 August 1892. Construction had been authorised in 1890 in response to the rapid growth of railway traffic that followed the opening of the Budapest–Rijeka line in 1873. Today the building is a protected cultural monument of Croatia, and the station remains the principal rail hub from which lines radiate across the country.

From Zagreb the route runs south toward Sisak before continuing to Novska, where it meets the M104 railway — a 185.4-kilometre electrified line that forms part of Pan-European Corridor X and follows the Sava river valley as the primary railway corridor of the Slavonia region. The M104 holds a particular place in Croatian railway history: electrified using the 25 kV 50 Hz AC system, it was the first fully electrified line in Croatia, with electrification completed in 1970, and it served as the route of the Orient Express from 1919 to 1977. Reconstruction of the Novska–Okučani section between 2012 and 2016 raised the maximum permitted operating speed on that stretch to 160 km/h. The cab ride thus moves from a grand nineteenth-century terminus through the quieter corridor south of Zagreb and on to a modernised international main line.