It belongs to the early creative phase of the artist and depicts a section of the Berlin-Potsdam Railway, opened in 1838, at the southwest of the city center of Berlin, in a style that seems to anticipate impressionism.

[1][2] Topographically, the painting does not exactly depict the curve to the southwest of the then single-track Berlin-Potsdam railway, the first line in Prussia, near today's Gleisdreieck.

The area was still undeveloped at the time, but was already earmarked for the large expansion of Berlin and looked correspondingly desolate after the abandonment of agricultural and horticultural use.

The silhouette of Berlin city center can be seen on the horizon; the two domes are the German and French cathedrals at the Gendarmenmarkt, but they are only hinted by Menzel's hasty brushwork.

Menzel was the first artist in Germany to recognize this wasteland in front of the city gates of Berlin as a painterly motif at the beginning of industrialization, with its railway as a means of transport and travel.