Somewhere along the railway line connecting Nova Gorica and Sežana lies Štanjel station, built in 1906 and officially opened to traffic on 19 July 1906. At that time, it was referred to as “Sv. Danijel – Kobdilj station” and stood on the “Karst line”, part of the Bohinj Railway. If you have ever travelled along the line, you may have noticed that the stations look very similar. At the turn of the 20th century, three larger and 14 smaller stations were built along the line according to the same standardised design. Štanjel station, built in the Austrian Alpine architectural style, differs from the others in one key detail: the metal, cast-iron columns supporting its platform canopy. These columns were designed in the studio of the Viennese architect Otto Wagner, and identical columns also adorn the canopies of Vienna’s city station.
Otto Wagner, Vienna’s most prominent architect at the time, was awarded the project to build the nearly 40 km long urban railway in 1896. The entire Viennese urban railway network was designed and built in the Viennese Secession style between 1896 and 1901. Among the 70 members of Wagner’s team were also the Slovenian architects Maks Fabiani and Jože Plečnik.
At Štanjel railway station, there are now five of Wagner’s columns. They were cast in Vienna by the foundry Rudolph Philip Waagner Wien, a joint-stock company. The name of the foundry is still inscribed on all five columns at Štanjel station. The columns are approximately 3.2 metres tall, with three pronounced bands about one metre above the ground. One is decorative and the other two were once clamps for attaching downpipes. At the top of each column is a stylised flower and an ornamented capital.
Wagner’s columns were only installed at major stations, namely in Jesenice, Gorizia, and two stations in Trieste: the suburban Rocol station and the main railway station. In 1905, nine such columns were also installed on the building of Šiška station in Ljubljana. Today, they are no longer to be found at Gorizia station, as they were replaced by Italian cast-iron columns after the war, after the station had been demolished, or at Jesenice station, which was also destroyed during the war. This makes Štanjel station the only station on the Slovenian section of the Jesenice–Trieste railway line where Wagner’s columns are still preserved.
In fact, in 1906, none of the stations on the Jesenice–Trieste railway line had Wagner’s columns. A renovation plan for Štanjel station from 1936, which depicts wooden support columns, confirms that up until then, the platform canopy in Štanjel had wooden columns, as was the case at other stations. After the Second World War, Štanjel station was left without roofs and canopies. Its renovation was only completed after Zone A was annexed to Yugoslavia. In the archives of Slovenske železnice, the Slovenian national railway company, there is also a 1953 design for a new platform canopy at Štanjel station, which again shows wooden columns. The question of when Wagner’s columns were brought to Štanjel station remains unanswered. One possibility is that they were brought from the demolished station in Jesenice.
The Jesenice–Trieste railway line, like Štanjel station itself, was opened on 19 July 1906. The first train to run on the line was the Habsburg imperial train, with Franz Ferdinand, the Habsburg heir to the throne, among the passengers. The train stopped only three times on its journey: in Bohinjska Bistrica, Rihemberk (Branik), and Štanjel.
The DBR 52 locomotive, which ran until steam traction was discontinued in 1978, also stood at Štanjel station until 2016. Today, it is on display at the Pivka Military History Park.
