At kilometre 46/47 the railway stops running parallel with the autobahn, which moves away in an easterly direction towards Greding, while the line enters the 7.7 kilometre-long Euerwang tunnel towards the south-west.

In the subsequent Denkendorf tunnel, the gradient drops slightly for a short time before the line reaches its high point at kilometre 71 at around 500 metres above sea level.

In the most likely option, the route would have run from Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof in a south-easterly direction along federal highway 4 and Autobahn 9 via Nuremberg-Fischbach and Feucht to Roth, where it would have connected to the existing Nuremberg–Augsburg line.

[17] A significant reduction in travel time was not expected, despite the fact that north-south long-distance trains would not have had to change direction at Nuremberg station over the approximately six km longer route.

[23] Considerations for upgrading the route from Würzburg via Ansbach and Treuchtlingen to Augsburg had already been discarded in 1983 to avoid bypassing the Nuremberg metropolitan area as a transport and economic centre.

[14] The new line in the administrative district of Swabia was clearly rejected, in particular by the city of Augsburg and its chamber of commerce, as well as by the Bund Naturschutz in Bayern ("Federation of Nature Conservation of Bavaria") and the citizens' initiative Das bessere Bahnkonzept ("The Better Railway Concept").

[13] Due to imponderables in the field of nature conservation,[13] Deutsche Bundesbahn were asked to draw up spatial planning documents for both major options.

According to a letter from Deutsche Bundesbahn Board Member Heinz Dürr to Minister of State Peter Gauweiler dated 29 May 1991, the new route option had become unavoidable due to the changed traffic flows and forecasts after reunification.

[14] In the same letter, the CEO requested that the planning process be shortened[5] to separate the projects for the new and upgraded Nuremberg–Ingolstadt–Munich line and the Mering bypass and four-tracking in the Augsburg area.

[28] The traffic forecast for the Federal Transport Routes Plan 1992 provided for 44 long-distance passenger and 38 freight trains per day and direction in 2010 on the new line.

[14] On 29 May 1992, the first planning approval process was initiated on the basis of the documents created by the Main Department for New Lines of the Federal Railway Directorate in Nuremberg.

Among other things, the Bavarian Administrative Court dismissed complaints brought by the BN in a joint judgment and order dated 29 March 1996[27] and 10 January 1997.

In view of the expected geological problems in the karstified Franconian Jura, a multi-stage karst exploration program was carried out as part of the planning.

The mountains were divided into four stages with regard to their karstification and examined by a so-called Karst working group of planners, experts and consultants from the Bavarian Geological State Office and the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg.

Depending on the degree of karstification, various measures were then taken, such as injection drilling up to 15 metres around the tube, cavity filling and piling; the inner shell was reinforced in places and the tunnel floor was structurally modified.

[6] The three major construction lots, north, middle and south, were let to general contractors on 3 September 1998 (according to another source: 1 October 1998[41]) for a total of €710 million (DM 1.4 billion) at a fixed price.

[42] The equipment for rail power supply, signalling technology and telecommunications was awarded as a separate lot for DM 120 million in January 1999 (according to another source: December 1998[6]).

Bavarian Minister-president Edmund Stoiber, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport Wilhelm Knittel and Deutsche Bahn chairman Heinz Dürr symbolically pressed a button.

Karst formations in the area of the Altmühlalb were particularly noteworthy, which could not be bypassed on a large scale due to the width to build the line parallel with the autobahn.

[34] On 19 January 1992, the federal government decided to have the planned new and upgraded line privately pre-financed as a pilot project for the first time with loans from the railways.

Since these were not initially available, the private pre-financing approved by the Bundestag was chosen in order to ensure that the economically desirable route was completed as quickly as possible.

The repayment amounts saved by switching from loans to construction cost subsidies from DB AG were also not fully invested in the existing network.

The auditors also criticised the fact that the budget legislature had not been included in the measures taken by the Ministry of Transport and that it was not possible to precisely determine the additional burden "due to the lack of transparency in the financing commitments".

[3] In its Black Book 2005,[76] the taxpayers' association criticised the cost increases and emphasised that every minute of travel time reduction was bought for €65.2 million.

The top speed of 343.9 km/h at kilometre 34.3 was reached in the first attempt at around 3:15 p.m.[79] The locomotive was in a largely standard condition, although some parts had been dismantled to improve air resistance.

Since there was only one ICE line running regularly on the high-speed route until the timetable change on 10 December 2006, these requirements could be met without any disruption to passenger traffic.

At the same time, the range of services between Munich and Berlin was increased from a two-hour to an hourly frequency, with three to four daily pairs of trains running on this line via Augsburg.

[94] In August 2011, Deutsche Bahn AG announced that it would stipulate that leading vehicles should be equipped with a train control system as a network access criterion for the new line.

After the Federal Network Agency had rejected this in January 2012, DB Netz AG raised an objection against which a complaint lodged by the authority was unsuccessful.

Four Alstom Coradia Continental railcars (class 1440), specially equipped with the Linienzugbeeinflussung automatic train control system, now operate this service.