Update: The railway is expected to reopen at 17:00 today (Tuesday, 06 August, 2019)

Two or three (reports differ) passenger train cars derailed at the Rimske Toplice train station at around 10:00 Tuesday morning, closing the railway line between Zidani Most and Maribor, a major transport link for both international passenger and cargo traffic. Around 200 people are said to have been on the international train, which was traveling towards Celje, although no injuries have been reported. A shuttle bus service is now being offered to replace the scheduled trains.

Updates to this story may be posted on the railway operator’s twitter account.

STA, 26 June 2019 - Six wagons of a freight train derailed on Tuesday afternoon in a tunnel near Hrastovlje in SW Slovenia, with a large quantity of the jet fuel kerosene leaking out from two cisterns. Transport on the railway has been suspended and there are also concerns that the leak might contaminate the local water supply system.

The response teams immediately started pumping out the remaining kerosene from the cisterns to prevent further leakage and managed to almost completely stop it by the evening.

According to Srečko Šestan, the head of the Civil Protection and Disaster Relief Administration, the problem is that the derailed wagons stand very close to the tunnel wall, which prevents the teams from accessing all leakage points.

Dušan Mes, the head of the national rail operator Slovenske Železnice, said that after the kerosene is pumped from all six derailed wagons, the would be removed from the tunnel and the work on repairing some 150 to 200 metres of damaged tracks would start.

Mes said the pumping would conclude by 2pm today and that the railway would be reopened for traffic on Friday. In the course of the day, it became clear that the cleanup effort would take a few hours longer, but relevant authorities still insisted that the track would reopen Friday.

According to Mes, the most probable cause of the accident is a damaged switch, while a damaged wagon is the less likely option. The possibility of a human error has been eliminated.

The kerosene is being pumped out by teams from the energy company Petrol and Slovenske Železnice, while firefighters are also helping out. It is estimated that some 10,000 litres of kerosene have leaked out of the cisterns.

The tracks in the tunnel are heavily damaged, which makes it difficult to get the pumped kerosene out of the tunnel, he added.

According to Mes, no one has been injured in the accident, except for one firefighter, who has sustained a light injury during the intervention.

The site of the accident is very close to the source of Rižana River, one of the water sources for the only water supply system of the entire coastal area, servicing up to 130,000 people during the summer.

The regional water supply operator and experts share the view that the kerosene is certain to reach the water source, during the first strong rainfall at the latest.

Measures have been taken to prevent the worst, the source has been cut off and monitoring has been put in place. Nataša Viršek Ravbar, a Karst researcher, said that the water source may remain polluted for a long time.

The Environment Ministry said it was closely monitoring the situation, adding that Minister Simon Zajc would inspect the site on Thursday.

Zajc, who is currently attending an EU ministerial in Luxembourg, has already agreed with his Croatian counterpart Tomislav Ćorić to stay in touch in the case that Slovenia needed Croatia's aid in drinking water supply.

As the railway has been closed for traffic, freight trains have been piling up in the port of Koper, with a total of 35 trains currently waiting in the port, the port operator Luka Koper said today.

While the the rail operator is making an effort to open the railway as soon as possible, the Luka Koper said it had advised its business partners to use cargo transport on the road in the meantime.

Luka Koper will be loading and unloading lorries in the port terminals also over the night to compensate for the closure, which means that significantly heavier cargo transport on the motorway in the coming days.

The site of the accident was also inspected yesterday by criminal police officers and forensics, as well as Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek.

Giving a statement for the press today, Bratušek praised the response teams and once again underlined the need for a second rail track connecting the port to the inland hub of Divača.

Preparatory works have been launched recently for the project estimated at just over EUR 1bn, after years of back and forth. The 2TDK, the special purpose vehicle established by the government to oversee the construction, also said that the accident showed how much a new track is needed.

It added that the new, state-of-the art-track would avoid almost entirely the sensitive water supply area and that the tunnels are all planned with oil catchers, which means that any waste water would be caught in waste holdup tanks.

STA, 18 June 2019 - A deal was signed in Novo Mesto on Tuesday that is to pave the way for revitalisation of a hundred-year-old cross-border railway infrastructure connecting Ljubljana with Slovenian border towns and further with Croatia.

The agreement on cooperation was signed by representatives of nine Slovenian municipalities, including Ljubljana, and Croatia's Karlovac. The project will be coordinated by the Novo Mesto Development Centre.

According to the head of the centre, Franc Bratkovič, the municipalities will contribute more than EUR 100,000 for the project in the next couple of years. "We will do everything we can to have the project included in national and European documents," he said.

The goal of the initiative to revive the hundred-year-old cross border railway infrastructure connecting Ljubljana with the border towns and further with Croatia's Karlovac and later Zagreb, is to make the Slovenian railway network and the towns along the railway competitive, said Novo Mesto Mayor Gregor Macedoni.

The modernisation of the railway is to boost connectivity, international cooperation and regional development.

One of the initiators of the project that was conceived a year ago, Grosuplje Mayor Peter Verlič, said that it was a precondition for the setting up of the European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation, which will enable the drawing of EU funds.

The modernisation of the railway, which is expected to be finalised in about ten years, will be funded from various sources.

In the initial phase, the railway track is to be modernised to allow for higher travelling speeds and heavier trains, train stations renovated and dangerous level crossings eliminated.

The next phase is to include electrification of the track and the purchase of ten modern trains.

The costs of the project have not been estimated yet, but Verlič said they would probably be similar to the costs of the modernisation of the Grosuplje-Kočevje railway.

Those costs reached almost EUR 100m.

STA, 14 June 2019 - Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek said on Friday she was working on the idea to connect Maribor and Ljubljana with express trains, a demand presented by a civil initiative earlier this week. Bratušek said she would push for connecting several European cities with fast trains to be one of Slovenia's priorities during the EU presidency.

"I believe Slovenia should be the initiator of express trains between Vienna, Ljubljana and Venice, and the first fast connection we need to introduce would be between Ljubljana and Maribor, two biggest Slovenian cities," the minister said.

The Infrastructure Ministry said it was working on a transport policy that is in line with the demands of the group of academics commuting from Maribor to Ljubljana on a daily basis who started the campaign for better transport connection between the two cities on Monday.

The initiative would like to cut the commuting time between the two cities to 50 minutes, while the train ride currently takes from two to three hours.

The head of the initiative, Mateja Ratej, noted that the Maribor-Ljubljana motorway, being a part of the transport corridor between eastern and western Europe, was heavily burdened, especially during holidays and in the summer.

"Traffic accidents are becoming increasingly frequent, causing tailbacks of several kilometres, which extend the 133-kilometre journey to several hours," she said.

The ministry said today it had already introduced a single integrated pass for public transport and additional fast routes. "We are modernising the existing and building new railway connections to have more cargo transported on rail and make the connections between cities faster, more cost-efficient, and more environment- and user-friendly."

According to the ministry, a task force will be set up to look into the possibilities for express trains between Ljubljana and Maribor and other cities, and estimate the costs of such a project.

The 50 Minutes Between Maribor and Ljubljana initiative was backed by the Maribor municipality and the List of Cyclists and Pedestrians.

"The situation has been causing discontent for a while and things get much worse in the summer months," Ratej said, calling for an action plan before the end of the year.

The initiative is now collecting signatures for its petition.

All our stories on railways in Slovenia are here

STA, 10 June 2019 - Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek has set out the advantages of the new railway connecting Slovenia's sole maritime port as she addressed China - CEEC Investment and Trade Expo fair in China.

Na Forumu predstavnikov držav, ki sodelujejo na mednarodni razstavi CEEC Expo sem se srečala s podpredsednikom vlade Kitajske Hu Chunhuajem in nagovorila ministre sodelujočih držav. Izpostavila sem projekt gradnje 2. tira, ki bo povečal konkurenčno naše Luke Koper. @mzi_rs ???? pic.twitter.com/PbjgLc6um4

— Alenka Bratušek (@ABratusek) June 9, 2019

According to a statement from her ministry, Bratušek addressed ministers and other senior officials of the countries participating in the fair in Ningbo, underscoring the importance of the emerging modern-day Silk Road that would create closer transport links between Asia and European countries.

She noted the EUR 1 billion-plus project to build a second rail track between the Koper port and the tail junction in Divača in inland Slovenia, which she said would further increase the port's competitive advantage.

The minister said the project would cut the journey travelled by ships from Asia to Europe by five to eight days compared to north European ports, which would reduce not only costs but also the impact on the environment.

[Kitajska ??] Iz Šanghaja do Pekinga 1.500 kilometrov z vlakom na sestanek z ministrom za promet. Hitrost vožnje do 350 km/h! ?⚡️ #gradimo #povzujemo #železnice #vlaki @mzi_rs #Slovenija ?? pic.twitter.com/54AuvXo2W9

— Alenka Bratušek (@ABratusek) June 10, 2019

Bratušek also visited the exhibition ground of the Slovenian companies showcased at the China - CEEC Expo fair, the port operator Luka Koper, the Slovenian railways operator Slovenske Železnice, postal company Pošta Slovenije, logistic companies Intereuropa, Adria Kombi and OmniOpti.

At the forum of representatives of the participating countries, the Slovenian minister met Chinese Vice-Prime Minister Hu Chunhua. Accompanied by Luka Koper CEO Dimitrij Zadel, Bratušek also visited the Ningbo port, one of the world's largest.

The minister also addressed mayors of cities as part of the 17+1 initiative including China, the Central and East European countries and Greece, and met the leaderships of the Zheijiang province and the Ningbo city.

Bratušek will also visit Beijing where she will meet Chinese Transport Minister Li Xiaopeng.

STA, 1 June 2019 - June brings change to public transport as a universal integrated transport service kicks in on Saturday. A passenger, buying one pass, will be able to use all means of public transport available, notably bus, coach and railway services of all transport service providers.

For those commuting daily to Ljubljana from nearby towns, 35 to 40 new fast bus or coach services will be introduced, which means they will have only one stop in-between.

Monthly and annual passes will be available as of today, with the former costing the equivalent of 32 single passes and the latter the equivalent of eight monthly passes.

This is in line with the government's decision in April, when a decree on the new integrated system of public transport for passengers was adopted.

New single, daily and weekly passes will be introduced in August, to be followed up in 2020 with an integrated monthly pass at the price of only 26 single passes.

Prices depend on the length of the journey; the lowest one was set for a distance of up to 5 kilometres (EUR 1.3) and the highest for over 150 kilometres (EUR 13).

Transport providers taking part in the new scheme will have an option of offering up to a 30% discount for monthly and annual passes.

The government decreed a 20% discount as the lowest possible for annual passes, as its goal is to have more than 80% of all passengers opt for annual or monthly passes.

The set prices are generally the prices of coach services, although transport officials have expected lower prices to encourage the use of public transport.

Although rail and bus fares should cost the same under the decree, business daily Finance recently reported rail operator Slovenske Železnice (SŽ) did not plan a price rise.

Commenting on the new system for Finance, Robert Sever of the GZS's transport section said last month: "We don't expect a revolution, but the fast lines will attract somewhat more passengers. However, passengers from Postojna will still get stuck in traffic jams on the motorway just like those in cars."

The expansion of the integrated passenger transport service comes after secondary school and university students started testing it in the 2016/17 academic year.

Finance has reported some EUR 120 million is available for public transport services a year, of which SŽ and 25 coach companies as the providers of the public service of integrated passenger transport received almost EUR 44 million for subsidised student passes in 2018.

STA, 15 May 2019 - The board of directors of the European Investment Bank (EIB) approved a EUR 250 million loan for the construction of a second rail track between rail hub Divača and Koper port on Wednesday, the EIB confirmed for the STA.

This approval is considered a significant step to finalising the financial plan for the project estimated at just under EUR 1.2 billion.

To approve the financing, the EIB insisted on a state guarantee for the loan which will be taken out by 2TDK, a company incorporated with the purpose of building and managing the new track.

Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek has previously said that the state guarantee should not be a problem as a relevant bill is as good as ready. It needs to take effect before the loan contract is signed, expectedly by the end of the year.

She told the press after the EIB approved the loan that such a decision was expected, considering that the European Commission already okayed a loan from the EIB.

2TDK CEO Dušan Zorko, who was also confident that the loan would be approved, said that the EIB recognised the importance of this project for the entire region.

The next step will be to negotiate the contract for the loan, said Zorko. Bratušek added that there was no hurry to sign the contract.

"We were in a hurry with the loan so that we could finalise the financial plan for the project and so as not to endanger the EUR 190 million from the EU," the minister said.

"With the EUR 109 million in grants provided by the European Commission, the project can now start," European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc said in a written statement.

The board of EIB directors was expected to discuss the loan to Slovenia in early April, but postponed the decision due to long debates about Brexit, the EIB said over a month ago.

STA, 28 February STA - Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek announced on Thursday the dismissal of Damir Topolko as the head of the Infrastructure Agency following the escalation of the scandal surrounding the dodgy tender for the Koper port rail track model.

The announcement comes after PM Marjan Šarec accepted on Wednesday the resignation of Environment Minister and former Infrastructure Ministry State Secretary Jure Leben while also calling for the resignation of Topolko.

The official video introducing the Koper-Divača "second rail" project

While Šarec had suggested that everyone else involved in the possibly rigged 2017 tender for the EUR 130,000 scale model should follow Leben's example, Bratušek said Šarec and her agreed today that conditions were not met yet to dismiss certain public servants.

Bratušek said the scandal also bore on other ministry employees, they however "cannot accept political responsibility for this fiasco"

As regards Topolko, Šarec and Bratušek both felt it was time to find a new name for the head of the Infrastructure Agency, which was responsible for the tender, carried out as a PR move for the EUR 1bn-plus investment in the Divača-Koper rail expansion.

"My predecessor Peter Gašperšič could have already done that," said Bratušek, adding a candidate had not yet been found to replace Topolko, who has ran the agency since mid-2015.

"But they didn't do it. I sense it was because that would mean revealing what is being revealed now: that the former leadership of this ministry was actively involved in the public procurement of this scale model, even though it is unusual for a minister or state secretary to interfere with public tenders," she added.

Bratušek said the scale model story had been inherited by her and that it was casting a bad light on the rail project that is now being managed differently and was on track on getting fully covered financially by the end of May.

STA, 26 February 2019 - A group critical of the government's Koper port rail project has filed a criminal complaint with the police against Environment Minister Jure Leben and several other officials over their role in the scandal around the 2018 scale model tender for the project, the commercial broadcaster POP TV reported on Monday evening.

The group that filed the complaint includes Jože Duhovnik of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering who had proposed an alternative, much cheaper solution for the Koper-Divača rail upgrade back in 2017.

Apart from Leben, who was in charge of the Koper-Divača project at the Infrastructure Ministry in the previous term, the list of those the group says misled the public and caused great damage to public finance includes the former Infrastructure Minister Peter Gašperšič and top officials of the roads and infrastructure agencies.

The leadership of the state-owned company managing the rail investment, 2TDK, and its supervisory board are also on the list along with Infrastructure Ministry State Secretary Nina Mauhler.

Duhovnik told POP TV last night that the investment programme for the Koper-Divača project had shown that those in charge had been "systematically misleading the public, fixing and adjusting data" all along.

The group is accusing Leben and company of "grand fraud, misrepresentation of data and misleading of the public", which led to "tremendous financial damage to public finances". They have estimated the damage at EUR 1.5bn-2bn.

Meanwhile, Leben and Gašperšič announced that they would report the group to the police for making a false criminal complaint.

A press release sent out by the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning on Tuesday afternoon said Leben and former infrastructure minister were convinced that the complaint was based on "groundless lies and malicious imputations" and was filed with the intention to attract media attention.

Police revealed in mid-February that they were investigating the commission of the scale model of the 27-kilometre track that had been revealed in early 2018 and turned out to be a major PR fiasco for the previous government, to the extent that the government abandoned the promotional activities and refused to pay for the model.

Media also reported of the email correspondence among those involved, purportedly proving that the commission of the scale model was effectively coordinated by a PR agency retained by the ministry to do promotional activities for the rail project.

While there was no smoking gun shown to point the finger at Leben, several emails revealed close coordination by the PR agency, Futura, and the public relations officer at the ministry, Nataša Pelko, who is now in charge of public relations at 2TDK.

Leben pointed his finger at Pelko on several occasions, but yesterday she struck back, according to POP TV. She wrote a letter to the supervisors and the entire leadership of 2TDK, saying she did not act on her own but "exclusively under instruction" from her then bosses, Minister Gašperšič and the project head, Leben.

Pelko says in the letter she was not involved in the talks on the scale model, did not know who the bidders were or who was picked in the end. She also denies having cooperated with Futura.

STA, 15 February 2019 - The European Investment Bank (EIB) has placed the project to build a new railway line between the port of Koper and Divača among the projects it would finance with loans. The state-owned company managing the project said that the EIB would provide a EUR 250m loan.

Announcing the news, 2TDK said that it had submitted the application for a EUR 250m loan to the bank last May.

"Negotiations between the EIB and 2TDK followed between October and January, on whose basis the investment bank will make a final assessment of the project and expectedly send it for confirmation by the board of governors in April."

Infrastructure Minister Alenka Bratušek, whose ministry is responsible for the project, welcomed the news, saying that the bank had recognised the quality and importance of the project.

"I'm happy that the things are moving in the right direction," the ministry quoted Bratušek, who added that the lengthy negotiations with the EIB had obviously produced a positive result.

"The decision is not final yet, but the placement on the EIB list means that the bank too has recognised the quality and importance of this project, which I believed in and expected throughout," the minister added.

In addition to government funding, the investment plan for the project also envisages loans from international financial institutions and the state-owned SID export and development bank, EU grants and loans from commercial banks.

The plan values the project at EUR 968m at current prices, but together with a reserve for unexpected works and interest the total price tag will be EUR 1.2bn.

All our stories on railways in Slovenia can be found here

The railway will be only 27 kilometres long, but the huge cost is attributed to the high number of tunnels and bridges on the tricky karst terrain.

Good news for the project also came today from the National Review Commission, which rejected a request for the suspension of public contracting pending an audit of the public tender for the project dossier.

The audit and the suspension of the public tender process was demanded by the engineering company Geoportal at the end of last year.

The review commission is yet to decide Geoportal's request to annul the tender. 2TDK had already rejected the request before forwarding it to the National Review Commission.

The sole bid for the job, worth EUR 19.93m excluding VAT, was submitted by a consortium of companies consisting of Elea iC, SŽ-Projektivno Podjetje and IRGO Consulting.