Royal Saxon State Railways
From 1918 until their merger into the Deutsche Reichsbahn the title 'Royal' was dropped and they were just called the Saxon State Railways (Sächsische Staatseisenbahnen).
Early on it was recognised that railway lines to Bavaria, Bohemia and Silesia were needed and that there ought to be a route running north-to-south through the kingdom.
On 14 January 1841 a treaty was agreed with the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg for the construction of a railway route between Leipzig and Hof.
At the same time the Royal Saxon-Bavarian State Railway Division (Königlichen Direction der Sächsisch-Bayerischen Staatseisenbahn) in Leipzig began work.
Because no suitable private company had been found to build the Saxony-Bohemian Railway from Dresden to Bodenbach, the state took over this task itself.
On the opening of the section from Dresden to Pirna on 1 August 1848, Saxony had its second state railway line, for which the 'Royal Division for the Construction and Operation of the Saxony-Bohemia Railway' (Königliche Direction für Bau und Betrieb der Sächsisch-Böhmischen Staatseisenbahn) was established, with a head office in Dresden.
On 1 September 1847, the 102 km long route from Dresden to Görlitz was opened by the Saxon-Silesian Railway (Sächsisch-Schlesische Eisenbahn), a private company that had formed with state support.
On 1 October 1853 the 'Royal Chemnitz-Riesa State Railway Division' (Königliche Direktion der Chemnitzer-Riesaer Staatseisenbahn) was established.
This had been necessary, after the private firm, the Chemnitz-Riesa Railway Company, had gone bankrupt due to the cost of structures needed between Waldheim und Döbeln.
By 1865 links from Leipzig to Corbetha and Bitterfeld, and hence connexions to Magdeburg and Berlin, were established as well as the Voigtländ State Railway (Herlasgrün–Eger).
One crucial event in the history of Saxon railway operations turned out to be the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between Prussia and Austria.
Because Saxony was on the Austrian side, it evacuated all the locomotives to Hof, Eger and Budapest when Prussian troops invaded.
In the subsequent peace treaty, Prussia was given ownership of those sections of the Silesian Railway that ran through its territory as well as Görlitz station.
The years after the foundation of the Reich in 1871 were also marked, in Saxony, by a large number of private railway construction projects.
The construction of railways made it possible to site industry even in the villages of the Ore Mountains and the Lausitz and to foster under-developed regions.
As early as 1865 the engineer's forum of the Union of German Railway Administrations (Verein Deutscher Eisenbahnverwaltungen) set out principles for secondary lines.
These were legally implemented in 1878 as part of the 'Railway Regulations for German Railways of Lower Importance' (Bahnordnung für deutsche Eisenbahnen untergeordneter Bedeutung).
Because even Sekundärbahnen did not produce the desired savings in every case, in 1881 the construction of the first 750 mm (2 ft 5+1⁄2 in) narrow gauge railways began.
These classes were deployed on the main lines for a relatively long time; it was not until 1870 that 4-4-0 locomotives (Saxon K II, later K VIII) entered service.
Even the different route profiles (flat in the north and northeast, hilly in the south and southwest) led to increasingly different designs.
