As someone who has spent a good deal of time riding the rails, nothing compares to that tingly feeling you get as you set out on a new adventure, especially one that promises a multitude of marvels. Over the next 12 hours I would be travelling through three countries and over three mountain ranges, via 254 tunnels and 435 bridges – and all for a paltry £20, less than I’d paid for my ticket from Paddington to Heathrow.

Once we were through Belgrade’s smoggy, brutalist suburbs, the landscape opened out into rippling hills punctuated by teeming wildflower meadows and thick forests. For many miles there wasn’t a road or building in sight. The train may be slow, but who needs speed with views like that?

My fellow passengers were mostly grumpy looking locals who alighted at the various towns along the way; it was only the more intrepid travellers and business types heading to the ports and resorts of the Adriatic.

A charming Serbian architect who sat opposite me explained how he would normally have taken the one-hour flight from Belgrade to Dubrovnik, a few hours by car from Bar, but owing to a bout of DVT (deep-vein thrombosis) had decided to stick to trains – “terrible for business but great for inspiration”. And “inspired” is exactly how I would describe my mood as we chugged out of the city of Valjevo, where the gently rolling hills suddenly erupted into jagged mountains. Most striking as I gazed out of the window was the intensity of the greens against the clear blue sky – there was something almost tropical about the dense foliage.

Having passed without incident into Bosnia and Herzegovina, we were then informed that we needed to change trains at the border with Montenegro. Chaos ensued as lippy guards checked passports before herding us into the narrow corridors of a much scruffier graffiti-laden train containing tatty wood-lined compartments and faded red velvet banquettes. So here was the Soviet legacy. 

I spent the next few hours wedged in on all sides by irascible locals, lanky backpackers and harried families heading for the coast; it all felt very Cold War era, but the pandemonium only added to a sense of messy anticipation. And the views just kept getting better.

Among the highlights was the majestic Mala Rijeka viaduct, until 2001 the world’s highest railway bridge at 200 metres. It’s here you truly appreciate what an ambitious venture this must have seemed when work began in 1969. The Yugoslavian project became a symbol of President Tito’s might.