Breitspurbahn

The railway was intended initially to run between major cities of the Greater Germanic Reich (the regime's expanded Germany)[1] and neighbouring states.

Since reparations due after World War I had to be paid, the German railway company Deutsche Reichsbahn lacked money for appropriate expansion and sufficient maintenance of their track network and rolling stock.

[2] Commercial and civilian traffic increased due to economic stimulation after the rise of the NSDAP and Hitler's seizure of power.

As a result, in part driven by its military objectives, the government began to prepare plans to modernize the railway network and increase transport capacity.

Objections from railway experts – who foresaw difficulties in introducing a new, incompatible gauge (and proposed quadruple track standard gauge lines instead), and who could not imagine any use for the vast transport capacity of such a railway – were ignored, and Hitler ordered the Breitspurbahn to be built with initial lines between Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich and Linz.

The project engaged commercial partners Krauss-Maffei; Henschel; Borsig; Brown, Boveri & Cie and Krupp, but did not develop beyond line planning and initial survey.

[4] Due to mountainous terrain, the initial phase routes of Aachen-Paris and Budapest-Bucharest were drawn via Antwerp instead of Liège, and via Belgrade instead of the Hungary/Romania border respectively.

The whole train would have a length of about 500 metres (1640 ft), allowing a capacity of between 2000 and 4000 passengers, travelling at speeds of 200 kilometres per hour (120 mph).