The Marsh Railway (German: Marschbahn) is a main line in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany that links the stations of Elmshorn in the south and Westerland on the island of Sylt in the north.

It is part of 237 km (147 mi) long route from Hamburg-Altona to Westerland (Sylt) and is listed in the Deutsche Bahn timetables as Kursbuchstrecke 130.

Twelve years later, on 15 October 1857, the line was realigned in Glückstadt and extended to the edge of the Stör river in Itzehoe.

This meant that traffic to Sylt had to cross the German-Danish border twice, although the Danish authorities allowed sealed transit trains to operate, avoiding customs inspections of passengers.

During the widening of the canal in 1920, a new non-opening high bridge was built on the geest at Hochdonn on a 5.8 km long bypass route.

The new train route with the new bridge was originally planned directly from Itzehoe to Meldorf, but because of protests from Wilster and Sankt Michaelisdonn, the line was elongated and rerouted to include these towns.

Significant changes took place on 1 June 1927 with the opening of Hindenburg causeway, which was prepared in 1922 by prolonging the line from Niebüll to Klanxbüll to enable material transports.

Deutsche Reichsbahn (German State Railways) opened a new station at Westerland together with the connecting part of the line.

These trains were aimed at offering travel times of less than two and a half hours from Hamburg to North Sea resorts, such as Büsum via Heide, Dagebüll via Niebüll and Sankt Peter-Ording via Husum.