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).

Proposed route map 1943 (postwar drawing with borders of 1937)
Comparison with Standard and Russian gauge
Models of two proposed Breitspurbahn passenger carriages next to a 19th century standard-gauge carriage at the DB Museum