Work to upgrade the line as German Unity Transport Project (Verkehrsprojekt Deutsche Einheit) no.

[3] The line was built by the Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company (German: Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie, LDE) established by twelve businessmen in 1835.

On 16 November 1835, land acquisition began for the section between Leipzig and the bridge over the Mulde west of Wurzen.

The line was brought into operation in several stages: On 7 April 1839, on the completion of the Elbe bridge at Riesa, the entire route from Leipzig to Dresden was finally opened.

[4] On this occasion, a coin was issued with an engraving of an English B locomotive, which ran over the line in the early years.

The Saxon part of the new Leipzig Hauptbahnhof (main station), which became the terminus for trains from Dresden, was put into operation on 4 December 1915.

This system of operations proved problematic, however, as the hilly route via Döbeln meant that additional locomotives were always needed for heavy trains.

[7] The upgraded line would allow operations at 200 km/h, according to the status of the planning set out on the foundation stone (1992), it would have been completed in 1999 at a cost of 2.675 billion marks.

This would have saved about 370 million marks, significantly reduced affects in nature and landscape and allowed the separation of fast and slow traffic.

[7] The preliminary design for the entire project was completed on 31 August 1992 and handed over to Deutsche Reichsbahn to check.

[7] In January and February 1994, the planned southern bypass of Wurzen was also deleted along with the connecting curve at Zeithain.

The intention in the summer of 1993 to initiate the planning process for the southern bypass of Riesa and the connection to the Berlin–Dresden railway was not carried out.

The southern bypass Riesa was finally abandoned in March 1995 and instead it was decided to upgrade the line through the town with a speed reduced to 100 km/h; the preliminary design work that was started in mid-1995 was delayed by this change to the plan.

To date (as of 2013), no completion date has been set for the entire project [16] In addition, a 7 km-long 110 kV traction current cable between Lüptitz and Wurzen and the Wurzen substation was to be rebuilt [8] and the train control of the whole line was to be implemented through electronic interlockings.

[8] The minimum journey time in the 2015 timetable between Leipzig Hauptbahnhof and Dresden-Neustadt for long-distance services is approximately 60 minutes.

[2] The ground for the upgrade of the line was broken in Dahlen by State Secretary Wilhelm Knittel, Deutsche Bahn board member Peter Münchschwander and foreman Steffen Müller on 9 September 1993.

In the section between Leipzig and Wurzen the existing route has been largely preserved; deviations of the line were necessary in four places to permit speeds to be raised.

Between Borsdorf and Bornitz the sub-block mode was used for the first time for trains entering from on a track connecting from an old line.

The section of line controlled by the electronic signalling centre at Wurzen now makes reversible operations possible continuously from Leipzig-Engelsdorf to Bornitz and Leipzig Hauptbahnhof to Oschatz.

[28] The Riesa–Zeithain section, including the three-track Elbe crossing,[29] and the new selection of line connecting to the Berlin–Dresden railway were completed as part of the third stage of construction.

The 13 km long upgrade of the line between Dresden-Neustadt and Coswig began in the autumn of 2009 and is expected to be completed in 2016.

[41] North of Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, the continuously double-track line turns east and runs through a densely populated area.

The platforms of Leipzig-Volkmarsdorf station, which have been dismantled, lay just before the Hermann-Liebmann-Straße road bridge (km 1.9) and at the following Bennigsenstraße bridge there is a track connection from the regional depot to the old LDE locomotive depot on the line to Dresden on the other side of the Leipzig–Geithain railway.

Just one kilometre after that is the point in Althen where trains from Leipzig terminated at the end of the first stage of the line's construction in 1837.

In Wurzen, the line which has run steadily to the northeast from Borsdorf reaches its most northerly point and crosses the Mulde.

At km 29.25, the line crosses federal highway 6 on the oldest still-used railway bridge in Germany, which was built in 1838.

500 metres past the station, the line ran until 1995 over a viaduct with three arches and then another bridge over the Döllnitz river.

After Weißig, the line to Böhla, which opened in 2010, carries the high-speed passenger services to the Berlin–Dresden railway to complete their approach to Dresden.

It formerly passed through the famous 515 m long 9.6 m-wide Oberau Tunnel, which was built by 500 master miners from Freiberg and 2,000 assistants over 3 years to 1839.

The Leipzig–Dresden line continues on the north bank of the Elbe via Radebeul to Dresden-Neustadt, where just before the station it connects with the Dresden–Görlitz railway.