The Berlin–Dresden railway is a double track, electrified main line railway in the German states of Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony, which was originally built and operated by the Berlin-Dresden Railway Company (Berlin-Dresdener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft). It runs from Berlin through the southern Teltow countryside and then between Lower Lusatia and Fläming Heath through Elsterwerda and the Großenhainer Pflege countryside to Dresden.
Upgrades completed in December 2017 enabled maximum speeds of . The traditional route through the southern suburbs of Berlin was reopened for long-distance trains in December 2025. Work is under way to allow speeds of on parts of the line.
History
Up to 1945 In 1848 the Berlin-Anhalt Railway Company opened the Jüterbog–Röderau line, connecting with the Leipzig–Dresden line and creating the first direct rail link between Berlin and Dresden. In 1872 the Berlin-Dresden Railway Company was founded to build a competing a line via Elsterwerda that was shorter. This route was opened on 17 June 1875. Long-distance traffic between Berlin and Dresden was divided between the two routes until the end of World War II.
1 October 1877 management of the line was taken over by Prussian state railways. On 24 January 1887 Saxony and Prussia contracted a treaty, under which ownership of the company passed to Prussia from 1 April 1887. This treaty also provided that the Elsterwerda–Dresden section was resold to the Saxon government on 1 April 1888, when it became part of the Royal Saxon State Railways.
At both ends of the line new stations were built, the Dresdner Bahnhof (Dresden station) in Berlin and Berliner Bahnhof (Berlin station) in Dresden. Both stations were used only briefly. In 1882 the Dresden station in Berlin (located on the site of the present-day Gleisdreieck U-Bahn station and the former postal station in Luckenwalder Strasse) was closed for passenger traffic. The line’s Berlin terminus was moved a little further north to the Anhalter Bahnhof (Anhalt station). A little later, the Berlin station in Dresden was abandoned as part of the redevelopment of the Dresden railway node. In its place the Dresden-Friedrichstadt station was built, which has been used since 1894 for freight and regional services. Since that time, long distance services have turned off towards Radebeul-Zitzschewig on the Leipzig–Dresden line and Dresden-Neustadt to Dresden Hauptbahnhof. In contrast, freight trains to and from Leipzig use the Berlin–Dresden railway from Radebeul-Naundorf station to Friedrichstadt.
The Prussian and Saxon railway administrations initially did not cooperate with the use of locomotives. Although carriages were hauled between Berlin and Dresden early on, the locomotives were changed in Elsterwerda. This caused financial losses and prevented a reduction in travel time. It was not until 1 May 1905 that the railway administration introduced locomotive operations with both Prussian and Saxon locomotives.
From 1875 until World War I the Prussian military railway ran parallel with the line from Berlin to Zossen. Between 1901 and 1903, the line between Marienfelde and Zossen was reinforced so that the Studiengesellschaft für Elektrische Schnellbahnen (Study Society for Electric Rapid Railways) could carry out tests with three-phase rapid transit sets and locomotives. On 28 October 1903, the record speed of was achieved on this line. In 1904, high-speed tests with steam locomotives followed on the upgraded military railway line. After the First World War, the military railway was disbanded as a military unit and operations on the military railway track between Berlin and Zossen were stopped. In the 1920s, the track in this section was dismantled and the military railway station facilities continued to be used by the Reichsbahn.
With the construction of the Teltow Canal, which opened in 1906, three new bridges for the Dresden Railway and the Military Railway became necessary south of the Mariendorf S-Bahn station (now Attilastraße).
At the southern end of the Tempelhof marshalling yard (near Priesterweg S-Bahn station, the long-distance tracks and the suburban tracks of the Dresden Railway were separated from the tracks of the Berlin–Halle railway. There was a separate pair of tracks for suburban traffic as far as Mariendorf station (later called Attilastraße). South of this station, long-distance traffic and suburban traffic shared a two-track line.
In 1936 a high-speed express service commenced between Berlin and Dresden using the Henschel-Wegmann Train, taking 100 minutes. The Berlin suburb train operations were electrified in 1939 and 1940. Berlin S-Bahn services commenced on 15 May 1939 between Priesterweg and Mahlow and on 6 October 1940 the S-Bahn was extended to Rangsdorf. The S-Bahn shared tracks in southern Berlin with long-distance passenger and freight trains. At the end of the 1930s work began on the new track to separate the S-Bahn and long-distance tracks, but by the beginning of the Second World War this work was not completed.
In April 1945, S-Bahn services ceased as a result of the war.
Reopening in 1945 After the end of the war in 1945 the railway line was seriously damaged by the allies. In addition the bridges over the Teltow Canal in Berlin were blown up in the last days of the war by the German army. Later the line’s second track was dismantled to provide reparations to the Soviet Union. Only two tracks have been restored on these bridges. Services resumed between August and October 1945. Between Mariendorf and Marienfelde stations S-Bahn services and the remaining passenger and freight services ran on a common two-track section. Between Rangsdorf and Wünsdorf steam suburban trains operated to connect with the S-Bahn.
The division of Germany and Berlin also affected the traffic on the Berlin-Dresden line. In 1951, a connecting curve was built in an easterly direction from the line linking with the newly established Berlin outer ring. Long-distance trains from Dresden used it to avoid West Berlin. The terminal stations on West Berlin territory were closed, including the Anhalt station on 18 May 1952. Afterwards regional services used the outer ring to reach the East Berlin stations of Schöneweide, Lichtenberg or Ostbahnhof. Only the S-Bahn service from Rangsdorf ran over the border into West Berlin. Freight services continued to operate in West Berlin from the north to Marienfelde station (including to the gas works at Mariendorf and the Daimler factory at Marienfelde). The remaining long-distance tracks south of Marienfelde station was partially dismantled or became overgrown in the following decades.
After the building of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, S-Bahn-operations between Lichtenrade and Mahlow were abandoned. S-Bahn services initially operated a shuttle service between Mahlow and Rangsdorf, but this was discontinued on 9 October 1961 due to the lack of repair and storage facilities. Commuter trains from Wünsdorf ran to Schönefeld Airport station. From 1962 there was an S-Bahn service to Berlin. As of 26 May 1963 a shuttle train consisting of a class VT 2.09 railbus (known as the "piglet taxi") ran between Mahlow and Blankenfelde, connecting to services on the outer ring.
Upgrading of the line since the 1960s The low capacity of the single-track line and the poor condition of the track had long caused operational problems. The high density of freight on the line left only a small number of paths for fast passenger trains. An improvement occurred in 1972, after the second track was fully restored. In the 1960s, work began on the raising of maximum speeds on the line to . The stations from Baruth/Mark to Brenitz-Sonnewalde were converted for high speed with the relocation of platforms onto sidings. For various reasons, trains could still only operate at .
The section from Dresden-Friedrichstadt to Radebeul-Naundorf was electrified on 28 September 1969. The adjoining section to the Berlin outer ring, including the two connections to the ring, followed in several sections from 1979 to 1983. A few years after the West Berlin S-Bahn network was taken over by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe, the reconstruction began on the missing second track between Marienfelde and Lichtenrade in 1988.
The route had heavy express train traffic towards Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Austria as well as inland traffic in the GDR. The notable trains included the Vindobona Express from Berlin to Vienna from 1957 and the Hungaria Express between Berlin and Budapest since 1960. Other important long-distance trains were the Balt-Orient Express to Bucharest, the Pannonia Express to Sofia and the Meridian to Belgrade, which at times ran as far as Bar on the Adriatic. From 1976 onwards, the Städteexpress ("city express") Elbflorenz connected Berlin with Dresden and "Fichtelberg" connected Berlin with Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz) on this line. They ran to Berlin in the morning and in the opposite direction in the afternoon. Later, the Berlin Express train pair was added, which ran to Dresden in the morning and to Berlin in the afternoon.
In local transport, trains ran approximately every hour between Schönefeld (bei Berlin) station and Wünsdorf, and some continued to Baruth. On the other sections, the importance of local transport was low. For many years only four passenger trains a day ran between Baruth and . South of Elsterwerda in the Dresden catchment area, there were somewhat more services.
The route was also heavily used for freight transport. The Dresden-Friedrichstadt marshalling yard was an important hub for north-south traffic. There was extensive traffic between Scandinavia as well as the Baltic Sea ports and the inland countries towards southern Europe. In addition, heavy block trains carrying raw lignite and in double traction were transported between Elsterwerda and Dresden. In the 1980s, up to 140 train journeys were made in the Weinböhla area each day.
Development in the 1990s After the fall of the Wall, the gap between Lichtenrade and Mahlow was closed for the S-Bahn and traffic to Blankenfelde was resumed on a single track on 31 August 1992. Occasionally, freight trains with compacted waste containers even ran on the S-Bahn track from the Gradestrasse transfer station to landfills south of Berlin.
On 17 May 1991, Deutsche Reichsbahn commissioned the Berlin and Dresden Reichsbahn rail divisions to quickly upgrade the line for a maximum speed of . On 15 July 1991, the board of the Deutsche Reichsbahn adopted appropriate measures. Less than a year was available for implementation. The planned costs were DM 145 million. In some cases, preparations should also be made for a top speed of 200 km/h. In November 1991, WSSB Verkehrstechnik GmbH, which belongs to Siemens, was awarded the contract to retrofit the control and safety technology. From January to May 1992, extensive retrofitting and renewal work was carried out on the line. The PZB train protection system was also installed, electrical supply lines were changed and the overhead line system was slightly adjusted. The rail track was not changed. When the timetable changed in May 1992, the maximum speed was increased in sections to 160 km/h. At the same time, switches with larger radii were installed, signal distances were increased and 100 new switch drives were installed. The signalling block system was automated throughout. This reduced travel times on long-distance transport by 35 minutes to under two hours. For the first time in several decades, speeds of more than were operated on the line. The scheduled travel time for long-distance traffic between Berlin Ostbahnhof and Dresden Hauptbahnhof was one hour and 59 minutes. Like the historic Henschel-Wegmann Train, it ran via Radebeul and on the Leipzig–Dresden railway to Dresden Hauptbahnhof. Deutsche Reichsbahn had purchased class 112 locomotives for express traffic.