Koper-Divača Railway: A decade too late, yet still crucial

The reporter who wrote the story would be hard-pressed to find similar scenes in Slovenia at any point in the last couple of decades. Slovenian railways and trains have long ceased to be a point of pride for Slovenians, who use the existing rail infrastructure sparingly, mostly due to poor connections and slow trains. A train from Koper to Hodoš travels its 315 kilometre route from the south-western to the north-eastern tip of Slovenia in six and a half hours - an hour and a half more than it takes a Chinese high-speed train to complete the route from Beijing to Shanghai which is four times farther.

Transport companies have had fewer qualms using Slovenia railways, but that may change in the future. Croatia is building a modern railway from the Port of Rijeka to the Hungarian border, and the Austrians are investing around EUR 10bn in a railway that will connect Vienna with...