The Nuremberg–Ingolstadt high-speed railway is a high-speed railway running between the cities of Nuremberg and Ingolstadt in Bavaria, Germany. It branches off the Nuremberg–Regensburg railway and runs parallel to the A9 Autobahn to Ingolstadt, where it joins the Munich–Treuchtlingen railway at Ingolstadt Nord station.
The line is an extension of the German Unity Transport Project No. 8 from Berlin via Halle/Leipzig and Erfurt to Nuremberg. The line is part of the Line 1 of Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).
The line was officially inaugurated on 13 May 2006. Limited operation with a twice-hourly long-distance service started on 28 May 2006. The line has been in full operation since December 2006. Compared to the former track via Augsburg, it cut off , or about 30 minutes journey time on long-distance and an hour on regional trains.
Project costs were estimated to amount to €3.7 billion (as of 2012). In 1998, before construction began, it was forecast to cost €2.3 billion.
The high-speed connection was controversial in particular because of its high cost, its ecological effects, but also for its route. Routes via Augsburg were also considered.
Route
The 77.4 km-long new line was largely routed parallel to Autobahn 9 to cut through as little of the landscape as possible. This "bundling" meant that nine tunnels with a total length of 27 kilometres were required–almost a third of the new route. The 7.7 km long Euerwang tunnel and the 7.3 km long Irlahüll tunnel are among the longest tunnels in Germany. In addition, 82 rail and road bridges were built, including five major steel bridges, and about 80 culverts (with a diameter less than 2 m). At 305 metres, the longest road bridge on the new line spans the new line, the Schwarzach and the A 9 near Großhöbing.
The continuously welded track was built on a slab track (km 11.5–86.6) in 120 metre-long sections. The tracks are designed for a maximum speed of 300 km/h over a total length of 69.4 kilometres. This shortens the long-distance travel time between Nuremberg and Ingolstadt from 66 minutes to around half an hour. Two new regional stations were built at and . While stopping trains approach platform tracks via sets of points, long-distance trains can run through the stations without reducing their speed.
Trains from Nuremberg to the new line run on the upgraded old Nuremberg-Regensburg railway to Nuremberg-Fischbach (9 kilometres). The route leaves Nuremberg Central Station in an easterly direction, crossing the railway line to Eger and running parallel to the S-Bahn lines 2 and 3 past the stadium to Nuremberg-Fischbach. At Reichswald junction, the Regensburg line is routed via high-speed points to a parallel track from the Nuremberg marshalling yard. The straight-ahead tracks connect to the new line to Ingolstadt.
The new line rises on the ramp to an overpass structure and crosses the line to Regensburg. While the lines towards Regensburg and Altdorf (S-Bahn) approach Feucht station on a left-hand curve, the high-speed line takes a slight right-hand curve through the municipality in a southerly direction. At km 13 it meets Autobahn 73 running west and Autobahn 9 running east. The line runs over the Schwarzach Viaduct over the Schwarzach and shortly afterwards through a trough structure under the Nuremberg/Feucht motorway triangle. While the A 73 ends here, the A 9 runs parallel to the line for around 35 kilometres.
The end of the Nuremberg Reichswald (forest) is followed by Allersberg station, Göggelsbuch tunnel, the bridge over the Main–Danube Canal and Offenbau tunnel. 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 a short interlude, the line runs aboveground through the Anlauter valley, the Schellenberg tunnel (650 metres) and the Altmühl valley with Kinding station. The autobahn runs further east in this short area.
In the subsequent Irlahüll tunnel (7,260 m), the line passes under the autobahn and then climbs by around 115 metres. 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 this section, the autobahn lies to the west of the railway line and is crossed again in the subsequent Stammham Tunnel. The line detaches itself from the autobahn and dives a little later into Geisberg tunnel. Within sight of the Audi factory in Ingolstadt, the line briefly runs parallel to the Etting bypass to the west.
The high-speed section ends at kilometre 83.7, immediately before a curve that runs into the Audi tunnel via a ramp. The new section ends with the end of its southern ramp, which also includes the platforms of Ingolstadt Nord station on the high-speed line. Here, the tracks merge into the Munich–Treuchtlingen railway, which has been widened to include a third track between the two Ingolstadt stations. After crossing the Danube on Ingolstadt railway bridge, the line reaches Ingolstadt Hauptbahnhof (main station).
The new line runs largely through an area dominated by agriculture and forestry. Areas of particular ecological value are cut through in the Lorenzer Reichswald (forest) in Nuremberg, when crossing the Altmühl and Anlauter valleys, and in the Kösching forest near Ingolstadt. The gradient of the line increases from Nuremberg (330 m above sea level) to Ingolstadt (370 m above sea level), with a low point in the Altmühl valley (375 m above sea level, km 59) and high points at around km 35.5 (450 m above sea level) and 71 (500 m above sea level).
In the new section, the track was built with a gradient of up to 2.0% with a cant of up to 160 millimetres and a cant deficiency (at 300 km/h) of 100 millimetres. A longitudinal gradient of 2.0% is achieved in nine sections from 600 to 1,815 metres in length (in Geisberg tunnel). The railway embankments reach heights of up to 16 metres. 55 percent of the new line is on curves, with a minimum curve radius of 4,085 meters. The crossover to the opposite track branching off at the stations can be operated at 130 km/h, those on the platform tracks at 100 km/h. The establishment of a crossover in Lohen (line kilometre 42) was planned, but was later realised only as a block post. The cross-section of the running tunnel is 92 square metres, the distance between the tracks is 4.50 metres.
The distance between centres of the line and the parallel autobahn between kilometres 13 and 48 is between 40 and 60 metres.
History Development of the Nuremberg–Munich line The first continuous rail connection between Nuremberg and Munich was completed in 1849. The Nuremberg–Augsburg section ran over the central section of the Ludwig South-North Railway built between 1843 and 1849 via Gunzenhausen, Nördlingen and Donauwörth to Augsburg (170 kilometres). The Munich–Augsburg railway (62 kilometres) was completed by the Munich–Augsburg Railway Company in 1840.
The first route of over 232 kilometres between Nuremberg and Munich meant than the line was 82 kilometres longer than the straight-line distance of 149.6 kilometres between the two main stations. The line was determined by the costs, transport demand and political goals of the 19th century, with scarce capital and limited technical choices. For the steam locomotives, which were comparatively slow by modern standards, a route that adapted to the mostly hilly terrain with numerous curves was sufficient. As early as 14 May 1863, Ludwig Joseph Freiherr von Brück, Director General of the Royal Bavarian Transport Authorities (Generaldirektor der Königlich Bayerischen Verkehrsanstalten), emphasised in a memorandum to King Maximilian II the need for a direct connection between the two largest Bavarian cities as the "first and next need" and "the natural beginning of the entire railway system".
The Munich–Ingolstadt railway was opened in 1867 and extended to Treuchtlingen in 1870. Between 1870 and 1906 long-distance trains between Munich and Nuremberg used this line, with a total length of 198 kilometres. With the commissioning of the Donauwörth–Treuchtlingen railway, the line between Nuremberg and Augsburg was reduced to 137 kilometres in 1906, and between Nuremberg and Munich to 199 km. After this shortening, Augsburg was again served by north-south traffic.
Initial situation
In the 1980s, the options for expanding the existing routes had been exhausted in many places: Intercity services reached 200 km/h on upgraded lines. The Augsburg-Oberhausen – Bäumeheim – (Donauwörth) (32.8 kilometres) and Munich-Lochhausen – Augsburg-Hochzoll (42.7 kilometres) sections had already been upgraded for this speed. At the end of May 1981, a total of 256.3 kilometres of track sections could be operated at 200 km/h. A further acceleration of train traffic on the lines, mostly laid out in the 19th century for lower speeds, was generally not possible without major rerouting. For example, numerous narrow curves on the track in the Donauwörth–Nuremberg section (96.3 kilometres) only allowed speeds of up to 160 km/h in places. In the 1980s, long-distance travel between Nuremberg and Munich was around one hour and 40 minutes.
With the new Hanover–Würzburg and Mannheim–Stuttgart lines, around 430 km of railways designed for operations at up to 250 km/h were under construction or in planning at the beginning of the 1980s, and the Intercity Experimental Intercity Express test train was at an advanced stage of development. Considerations at that time envisaged the construction of a 31.8 km-long long-distance railway replacement line for long-distance passenger and freight traffic in the Nuremberg area. 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. The change of direction in Nuremberg would have been abolished and the capacity that would have become free on the tracks between Roth and Nuremberg was to be used for the planned line 2 of the Nuremberg S-Bahn. 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.
First considerations The first federal transport route plan from 1973 provided for an upgraded route between Würzburg and Augsburg via Nuremberg as one of eight development projects. This project was included in the 1977 Coordinated Investment Program (Koordinierten Investitionsprogramm) as well as in the 1980 Federal Transport Plan (Bundesverkehrswegeplan).
On 3 August 1983, the Nuremberg railway division of the then Deutsche Bundesbahn presented the DB headquarters with an initial proposal for a new rail link between Nuremberg and Munich. At the request of the DB in 1984, the project—with an open route, open investment costs and "subject to sufficient proof of economic viability taking into account the network effects"—was included in the 1985 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan. The economic cost–benefit ratio for the project was 1.2. The exact alignment would still be examined. The main issues discussed were an upgrade of the existing line via Treuchtlingen/Augsburg with partial line improvements and the construction of a new line between Nuremberg and Ingolstadt with an upgrade of the line between Ingolstadt and Munich. In 1986 and 1987, a comparison of options was carried out by DB.