Due to the winding valley of the Paka River, which carved a narrow gorge that resembles a canyon in some spots into the eastern reaches of the Karawanks, it was necessary to build as many as 5 tunnels: Paka 1, Paka 2, Huda luknja, Gornji Dolič and Mislinja. The longest tunnel is Huda luknja with a length of 421 meters, whereas the combined length of all tunnels is as much as 856 meters! Mushrooms were grown in the Paka 1 tunnel for some time after the route was closed, and the Štrekna cycling route goes through the restored Gornji Dolič and Mislinja tunnels. A real feast for the eyes is the stone arch bridge over the Ponikva stream, which flows from the Huda luknja cave in front of the eponymously named tunnel. It is one of the most picturesque as well as the most demanding construction projects on the route.

Where there was no rock standing in the way in the gorge, it was necessary to cross the torrent eight times. 7 of the 8 bridges had a steel structure and the longest bridged a gap that was 29.7 meters wide. After the Gornji Dolič station, the route crossed the Paka River one last time over a 14.6 m-long stone arch bridge. The most renowned bridge construction is the 100-meter-long Gornji Dolič viaduct, which consists of as many as eight arches. It also has an interesting history, as it survived demolition during the war.

Between April and November 1944, partisan forces carried out 80 operations on the route between Celje and Dravograd. On the night of 18 June 18 1944, Zidanšek's brigade demolished 4 arches of the railway viaduct in Gornji Dolič. The intention was to prevent the Germans from transporting lignite from the Velenje coal mine. The viaduct was quickly restored.

Just past Slovenj Gradec, the route led over a 32-meter-long steel bridge, which has since been beautifully renovated and is now used by both cyclists and pedestrians. The last time a locomotive crossed the Mislinja River was over a 42-meter-long bridge in front of Otiški Vrh.

Have you ever wondered what such facilities along the railway are for? All stations needed huge amounts of “soft” water to supply steam locomotives and that water was usually stored in special buildings called water towers. Water towers stored the water at such a height that it could easily and quickly flow through the pipes into the containers (tenders) of locomotives with the help of gravity. The water supply was quite a challenge with heavy traffic, so the reservoirs were quite large - from 20 to 70 cubic meters.

This was a valuable supply of water even in the event of fires. In 1945, 20,000 cubic meters of water were poured into steam locomotives. With its investments, the railway also indirectly made a huge contribution to the development of the water supply infrastructure of the local environment.

There was a time when the railway was the only traffic artery in the area, so the stations were actually a window to the world and the center of all that was happening, a place for trade and events as well as the most important source of information brought there every day by trains. The buildings were organized to allow for a variety of activities and to accommodate railway staff consisting of the station chief, signalmen, switchmen, storekeepers, warehouse workers, stokers and others.

Here, many local residents also encountered the telephone for the first time, as the stations boasted a well-developed telecommunications network. In different periods, there were 7 stations and 8 stops between Velenje and Dravograd.

Despite the simple principle of operation, locomotives were complex machines that could only be operated by those with many years of experience. You only became a train driver after a few years of hard work as a stoker, as it was necessary to know the operation and the route in detail so that you would not run out of power on demanding sections of the track. Stoking in the steel furnace would begin a good few hours before departure, so that about 5 m³ of water could be heated to over 250 °C.

Did you know that stokers would manually add several tons of coal into the furnace during one train ride? Due to the difficulty of the track, weaker and lighter locomotives ran on the Mislinja railway line, which could reach speeds of over 60 km/h. The ride between Velenje and Dravograd lasted on average 1 hour and 45 minutes, whereas it took a mixed train 3 hours to do the same distance.

It is no surprise that the memories of older local residents about their first school trip, their first trip to the sea and other experiences usually start right at the train station. After the war, the train was the main means of transport for all people in addition to cargo. Trains were even given names according to the direction of their arrival, such as "Mariborčan", and they also served as a point of reference of time. If the first train woke you up, it was about time you got up. People were especially looking forward to the “twelve thirty train”, which meant lunch time, and the “seventh train”, which announced that a workday in the field was coming to an end.

These large moving machines called locomotives were very interesting to children so they often played near the track and stations and listened with great attention to the shaking of the rails as the train was approaching. After school and especially during the holidays, they gathered wild fruits in the surrounding forests and sold them in the evening near the station. The older ones used to take the train to Velenje where they went to school and the bravest among them would show off in front of their crushes with daring jumps from the wagons while driving on slower sections, which was of course strictly forbidden!

In modern times, it is a very special event that brings a smile to children's faces. Every year in December, Slovenian Railways organize a very special experience for children - a ride with an authentic, over 100-year-old museum locomotive, which also runs between Maribor and Dravograd. Not even Santa Claus is missing on this festive ride.

With the rapid development of road transport, passenger and freight rail transport has increasingly moved to roads. In addition to the railway line became unprofitable, there were no funds for renovation and upgrading, so it was first abolished for passenger transport (July 1, 1968) and a year later for freight transport (April 30, 1969). People were very fond of the train so they had a hard time accepting the decommissioning. There were protests and in Šmartno near Slovenj Gradec even weapons were drawn. But market logic, which favoured cars and more expensive but significantly faster buses, removed the train out of people's everyday lives.

Between 2007 and 2013, the municipalities of the Mislinja Valley established the Štrekna cycling route on the abandoned track, alongside which the Štrekna bus is running today.