"At noon, the steam engines, adorned with banners and wreaths, hauled the rail cars from which the music by the Styrian regiment "Piret" was merrily blasting and in which many nobles came from Vienna, Graz, and Maribor. All this gentry was invited to lunch during which they proposed toasts to his majesty the Emperor and the entire Imperial family. Then, they returned towards Graz by rail." This is a chronicler's description of the event when the first train (called Lukamatija, or Luke Matthew) arrived at Celje on the Pentecost Sunday of April 27, 1846.
Railway construction in Celje started a year earlier when immigrants from Furlanija, Primorje, and Bohemia flocked to Celje. They took part in the construction of the so-called Southern Railway that connected the imperial Vienna to the port of Trieste, opening up a window to the world via Adriatic Sea. The railway required solid bridges, tunnels, trenches, embankments, and retaining walls that are admired to this day. It opened up new possibilities of economic prosperity for Celje as fresh capital poured in.
Although the track to Celje was ceremoniously inaugurated in the spring of 1846, it took two more years to complete the track to Zidani Most and three years until the first train from Vienna was greeted in Ljubljana (September 16, 1849).
