The Frankfurt–Göttingen railway is a continuously double track and electrified main line in Hesse and southern Lower Saxony, Germany.

After the Prussian annexation of the Electorate of Hesse as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, it was completed to Frankfurt as the Frankfurt-Bebra Railway.

In order not to leave Kurhessian territory, the railway followed the valley of the Haune and not that of the Fulda, which belonged to the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

During the Second World War, the strategically important line was the target of Allied air raids, notably on 4 December 1944 near Schluechtern and Gelnhausen.

After the agreement was concluded, the participating officers exchanged flasks of whisky and vodka, and from then on the railway line was known jokingly in German as the Whisky-Wodka-Linie.

Due to the division of Germany, this east–west traffic came to a standstill—apart from transit and interzone trains, which now operated with a change of locomotive and direction of travel in Bebra.

In addition to several bridges that were rebuilt to create the necessary clearance, the porous vault of the Schluechtern tunnel had to be renovated.

[17] In mid-1984, the Bundesbahn division (Bundesbahndirektion) in Frankfurt am Main began investigating how to update the Federal Transport Route Plan.

An iterative procedure was to be used to identify sections of the route that would allow the greatest possible reduction in travel time by means of small upgrade steps and pieces of new infrastructure.

For the individual sections of the Kinzig Valley Railway, the investigation showed very different costs due to variable topographies and structures.

[18] A joint investigation of the Kinzig Valley route and the Riedbahn (Mannheim–Frankfurt railway) commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Transport resulted in a benefit–cost ratio of 15.

[19] As part of the preliminary planning completed in 1986, it was intended to create three 200 km/h high-speed sections with a total length of 55 kilometres: between Hanau-Wolfgang and Gelnhausen-Höchst, north of Wächtersbach and between the Flieden and Fulda areas.

Major line improvements for the project were planned in Kerzell, Neuhof, Bad Soden-Salmünster and Wirtheim, with smaller works in Wächtersbach and Gelnhausen.

Five signal boxes and a total of 41 bridges were to be rebuilt and the entire route equipped with the Linienzugbeeinflussung train control system.

[21] After the state of Hesse had requested a spatial planning procedure for the three-track expansion from Hanau to Gelnhausen and the line improvements at Kerzell and Neuhof on 1 December 1986, there were delays.

[24] The official start of upgrade was marked by the symbolic driving of a first pile by the then Hessian State Secretary for Economic Affairs, Dieter Posch, on 27 September 1989 in Steinau an der Straße.

[33] The construction of the Frankfurt Schlachthof–Hanau railway via Offenbach at the end of the 20th century also affected a large part of the existing track infrastructure.

In 1998, a connecting curve was built north-east of Eichenberg, which enables direct journeys from Göttingen to Heilbad Heiligenstadt.

[34] With the possibility of being able to overtake regional trains "on the fly" as a result of the establishment of bidirectional track operations, longer waiting times in the stations could be avoided.

[43] After German reunification—even before the completion of the previous development project—due to the expected increase in traffic in the early 1990s, a partial four-track upgrade between Hanau and Fulda was examined.

[26] The traffic forecast for the Federal Transport Routes Plan 1992 provided for 36 long-distance passenger and 104 freight trains per day and direction for the year 2010 on the upgraded line.

[47] With more than 300 trains a day in freight, regional and long-distance traffic, the Fulda–Bebra section is also largely utilised, so a new route for the Fulda–Erfurt line is also part of the planning.

[51] However, in order for the development to begin at all, the Gelnhausen electronic control centre (ESTW) must be built and the existing level crossings must be removed.

To solve an expected bottleneck at the southern Main connection of the long-distance railway tunnel, an additional double-track line between Offenbach West and the north side of Hanau station operated at up to 200 km/h is assumed in the third expert draft of the proposed German integrated regular-interval timetable.

A 16-kilometre section between Hanau and Gelnhausen (line kilometers 24.8-40.3) is equipped with the Linienzugbeeinflussung cab signalling and train protection system, has three tracks and can be operated at up to 200 km/h.

Between Frankfurt Hbf and Hanau Hbf and between Haitz-Höchst and Flieden, the line is also equipped with the ZUB 262 speed control for tilting technology system, since there are curves in the area of Wirtheim, Wächtersbach and between Bad Soden-Salmünster and Flieden, some of which only have a maximum speed of 130 km/h (only 110 km/h between Bad Soden-Salmünster and Schlüchtern).

With the opening of the Hanover–Würzburg high-speed railway in 1991, the Fulda–Göttingen line lost the InterCity trains that ran between Hanover and Frankfurt or Würzburg.

Since the 2017/2018 timetable change and the full commissioning of the new Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle high-speed railway, ICE route 11 has also been running from Munich via Stuttgart, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Fulda, Erfurt and Leipzig to Berlin.

[69] New rolling stock of Alstom Coradia Stream HC, which are equipped with free WLAN and power points, are to be used.

Some DB Regio regional express train pairs run from Bebra to Frankfurt and back during the peak hour under the designations "RE5" or "RE50".