The Cologne-Rhine/Main high-speed line is a 180-kilometer-long German high-speed railway line for long-distance passenger traffic. It runs from Cologne via Siegburg, Montabaur, Limburg and Frankfurt Airport to Frankfurt am Main. The Breckenheim-Wiesbaden railway line connects Wiesbaden and Cologne/Bonn Airport can be reached via the Cologne airport loop. The line, which can be traveled at 300 km/h between Siegburg and Frankfurt Airport, connects the two largest German metropolitan regions, Rhine-Ruhr and Frankfurt/Rhine-Main, with a total of around 15 million inhabitants. It shortens travel times on numerous national and international routes by around an hour compared to the left-bank Rhine route. The shortest scheduled travel times between Cologne Central Station and Frankfurt Airport in the 2022 timetable year are 50 minutes, and to Frankfurt Central Station 64 minutes. It was the first new German line to be designed exclusively for (passenger) high-speed traffic. More generous routing parameters (longitudinal gradients of up to 40 per thousand and tighter curves with correspondingly greater superelevation) prevent the use of heavy locomotive-hauled passenger and freight trains. For the first time, the then-new slab track was installed over almost the entire length and the route was upgraded for the unrestricted use of eddy current brakes. Another special feature is the close bundling of traffic routes with the A 3. Another unique feature was that until 2018, the majority of the route was only used in regular operation by a single vehicle type, the ICE 3 (BR 403, BR 406, BR 407), and for test runs by the ICE S. The route was built between 1995 and 2002, but the start of the route (junction) Cologne – Cologne Steinstraße junction has not yet been built. Deutsche Bahn AG has stated that the total costs to date are 6.0 billion euros. In the first 15 years of operation, around 220 million passengers were transported. The route is used by around 120 ICE trains every day. It is part of the core network of the Trans-European Transport Networks. It emerged from the new Cologne-Groß-Gerau and Cologne-Koblenz routes planned in the 1970s and 1980s. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Route details: Line length: 180[ km T Track gauge: 1435 mm (standard gauge) Line class: D4 Power system: 15 kV 16.7 Hz ~ Maximum gradient: 40 ‰ Minimum radius: 3348 m Maximum speed: 300 km/h Train control: LZB, PZB Double track: throughout ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------story: As early as 1850, a railway line through Westerwald and Taunus, via Deutz, Siegburg, Hachenburg, Limburg and Wiesbaden, was being considered. For strategic reasons in particular, a route along the left bank of the Rhine, today's Left Rhine line, was chosen. In 1963, Franz Kruckenberg presented a concept for a Frankfurt-Cologne express railway line that would run along the right bank of the Rhine and largely be based on the motorway and airports. In a study presented to the board of the German Federal Railway in 1964, various variants of new lines were considered to bypass the Left Rhine line, which was then the busiest line in the express train network. As part of the expansion program for the Deutsche Bundesbahn network, the DB presented the Cologne–Groß-Gerau extension line project in 1970. A key reason for the plan was the overloading of the two existing Rhine routes. The route only corresponded to the route that was built around 30 years later for the first few kilometers from Cologne Central Station. The only stop for passenger trains was planned to be the Bonn-Beuel station, which was to be expanded, and the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Wiesbaden and Mainz were to be connected to the Taunus Railway via two connecting curves. In Groß-Gerau (near Darmstadt), the route was to merge into the Riedbahn, which was to be expanded to 200 km/h. The new line was included in the 1973 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan, but due to regional opposition and disputes over the route, it ultimately fell behind the Hanover–Würzburg and Mannheim–Stuttgart high-speed lines that were built in 1973 and 1976 respectively. The project was eventually removed from the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan. A new Cologne-Koblenz line was included as a new project in the 1980 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan, but its concrete planning was initially postponed in favor of the new Hanover-Würzburg line. The continuation of the planning was to be decided as part of the update to the next Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan. In 1985, a new line between Cologne and Frankfurt, with a Taunus tunnel around 20 kilometers long, was planned and approved by the Federal Cabinet. Preliminary studies on various route variants ultimately led to the then Federal Railway registering a new Cologne-Siegburg-Limburg-Frankfurt line for the 1985 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan in the mid-1980s. Very different opinions from the three federal states through which the line would pass led to its inclusion in the plan, but with an open route that needed to be examined in more detail and with a planning corridor of possible routes. The realization of the new line was given the highest priority. The cost-benefit ratio was 4.0. The approximately 140-kilometer-long route was considered the most important new rail transport project in the 1985 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan. Due to the high costs of a route that was equally suitable for passenger and freight trains, the Federal Railway abandoned such plans in 1986 and has since advocated a purely passenger route to the right of the Rhine. During the planning phase, the Federal Railway described the Cologne-Rhine/Main route as "the connection between Germany's most important metropolitan areas and (...) the strongest traffic flow in Europe." At the end of the 1980s, almost three million people lived in the Rhine/Main area and around ten million in the Rhine/Ruhr area. The travel time between the main stations in Cologne and Frankfurt was around 135 minutes. The authorities also justified the need for a new route with the high load on the existing routes: at the end of the 1980s, a total of up to 600 trains ran daily on the left and right Rhine routes, which, taking operational quality into account, exceeded the capacity limit. The railway hoped that the new line would increase passenger numbers by 50 to 100 percent, while relieving road and air traffic by around 15,000 to 30,000 passengers per day. In the 1980s, however, the Left Rhine line increasingly became a bottleneck in the German railway network. As early as 1970, an average of 121 trains per day and direction ran on the Left Rhine line between Bonn and Bad Godesberg on 252 working days with full freight traffic; on the Right Rhine line (between Troisdorf and Unkel) the load was 145 trains. At the end of the 1980s, around 70 percent of the trains between Cologne and Frankfurt ran on the Left Rhine line, around a third - mostly freight trains - on the Right Rhine line. The forecasts underlying the 1992 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan assumed an increase in long-distance rail passenger traffic between Cologne and the Rhine/Main area between 1988 and 2010 of up to 100 percent, to more than 25 million passenger journeys per year, while an average increase of 40 percent was expected for all German long-distance rail passenger traffic. This was based on 88 long-distance passenger trains and three freight trains per day and direction. In mid-1994, Deutsche Bahn was expecting 79 long-distance passenger trains, with freight trains having been eliminated. The separation of fast and slow traffic (network 21) was not yet taken into account. In 1995, Deutsche Bahn expected passenger numbers to increase by up to 70 percent. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Construction: Construction work on the line began on December 13, 1995 with the start of construction on the Frankfurter Kreuz tunnel. At the end of 1995, earthworks were underway on the entire southern Main section. When construction work began, railway boss Heinz Dürr expected the travel time between Frankfurt and Cologne to be reduced from 135 to 58 minutes after the line was completed in spring 2000. The number of passengers on the Rhine corridor was expected to rise from 11 to 12 million passengers at the time to 20 to 25 million by 2010. In October 1998, the installation of the tracks and overhead lines began on the southern Main section. The installation of the slab track had begun a month earlier. The first construction work began on the 135-kilometer-long middle section at the beginning of 1997. On 13 May 1997, Federal Transport Minister Matthias Wissmann, North Rhine-Westphalia's Economics Minister Clement and railway boss Dürr broke ground in Siegburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. Construction work was in full swing from autumn 1998. The last sub-project, construction of the Cologne/Bonn airport loop, began on 4 December 2000, after legal disputes had been resolved. Construction work on the tunnels in the high-speed section began in September 1998, and completion was planned for the end of 2000. Their construction on the surface of the low mountain ranges was difficult due to the mostly low cover (often 10 to 20 metres) and the unstable rock, which had weathered to depths of up to 80 metres. In order to achieve significant advance in the mostly difficult environment (expansion rates of usually around one to five metres per day), this work took place around the clock. The majority of the surplus material from the construction of tunnels and cuttings was used as side deposits along the motorway. They were modelled as a noise barrier in accordance with the landscape planning and then recultivated.[89] In many places, the noise barriers reduced the noise beyond the legal requirements. In 2000, a temporary connection to the Main-Lahn railway was built in Idstein's Frauwald. This connecting track was dismantled before the line was completed. Construction of the slab track began in May 2000. Installation of the overhead line began on June 8, 2000. Track construction began in March 2001, which was driven forward from the Kelsterbach and Niedernhausen train stations, among others. The Siegauen tunnel was the last tunnel to be built using mining methods and was completed in spring 2001. During the construction phase, traffic on the neighbouring A 3 was also affected. Up to 48 construction sites (maximum speed 100 km/h) were set up on the motorway at the same time. During the construction phase, the motorway route was relocated in ten places over a total length of 14.9 kilometers for a period of 8 to 31 months. In construction lot A of the middle construction section alone, the highway was rerouted over a length of 8.3 kilometers. In four places, the motorway was permanently relocated in order to consolidate traffic routes. Up to 15,000 people were involved in the construction of the railway line at the same time. During the tunnel construction work, a total of 7.5 million cubic meters of earth were excavated and around three million cubic meters of concrete were used. 1,400 miners were hired. During the construction of the tunnels, 13 people (according to another source, 8) died in accidents. Numerous compensatory measures were intended to compensate for the intervention in the ecosystem caused by the construction of the route. As part of the largest reforestation project, around 50 hectares were reforested for a planned local recreation area near Frankfurt. The area required for the 219 kilometers of track is 708 hectares. Of this, around 230 hectares are for the actual track, the rest for succession areas such as ditches, embankments and fallow land. In addition, around 2,200 hectares of compensation areas are planned. The majority of the compensation was carried out away from the route in order to protect agricultural land or to achieve greater ecological benefits. A total of 30 million cubic meters of material were moved during the earthworks, and a further eleven million cubic meters were excavated during the tunnel construction work. Around 300,000 tons of steel and 500,000 cubic meters of concrete were used. During the construction of the line, the polluter pays principle was applied for the first time in paleontological monument preservation. Numerous excavations were carried out along the route at the expense of the developer, which brought to light a large number of finds. Construction of the line was completed in December 2001. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operation: The high-speed line is approved for 200 km/h between kilometers 10 (Cologne) and 26 (Siegburg), up to km 28 (Siegauentunnel) at 250 km/h, then up to km 161 (Caltex junction) at 300 km/h. This is followed by a section approved for 220 km/h, which is reduced to 200 km/h from km 166 before the airport long-distance station. 100 km/h is permitted in the airport long-distance station. The northern section of the line is scheduled to be used by 62 trains per day and direction (calendar week 3/2020, between Siegburg/Bonn and Willroth). The greatest load is in the southern section, between Raunheim Mönchhof and Frankfurt Airport long-distance station, with up to 94 trains per day and direction. Until the timetable change in December 2017, only ICE-3 multiple units ran on the high-speed line in scheduled passenger service between Siegburg/Bonn and Raunheim. Until then, these were the only passenger trains with a permit for this steep route. The background to this was a regulation by the owner DB Netz AG that only trains with active eddy current brakes were allowed to travel on this steep section. The requirement to use an eddy current brake was removed from DB Netz's access conditions in 2012. There were plans to change the access conditions as early as 2008. Due to the problems with the wheel sets of the ICE 3, DB Fernverkehr AG considered using shuttle trains with two locomotives of the 101 or 120 series in sandwich traction together with up to a maximum of 8 IC intermediate cars. Ultimately, this plan was not realized because after a few days most of the ICE-3 fleet was available again. In contrast to the TGV or ICE 4, ICE-3 multiple units of the 403 and 406 series are still only allowed to travel on this high-speed line at a maximum of 230 km/h with the eddy current brake switched off, as they do not have enough braking power due to the lack of a magnetic rail brake and an insufficiently dimensioned electric brake. For the ICE-3 trains of the 407 series, a limit of 250 km/h applies with the eddy current brake switched off due to the stronger electrodynamic brake compared to the 403 and 406 series. Due to the pure operation and the associated reduction in disturbances, the line has already been used for basic research into track geometry and rolling contact fatigue. In 2011, test and approval runs took place with a TGV 2N2 on the Cologne-Rhine/Main high-speed line. The background to this was a planned route for some TGVs from Paris via Cologne and Frankfurt to Munich. Such a line was ultimately not introduced. The TGV 2N2 was nevertheless approved. They were the first vehicles without eddy current brakes to be allowed to use the high-speed line in passenger service. The line was completely closed for four weekends from mid-April to mid-May 2015 to replace the rails over a length of 117 kilometers. The cost of the measure was estimated at around 15 million euros. The line was closed for two weekends in September 2018 to renew 6.6 km of track. In autumn 2015, test and approval runs of the new ICE 4 (multiple train 9002) took place between Siegburg/Bonn and Frankfurt Airport on the high-speed line. Approval for passenger service was then granted in 2016. They only travel the route at a maximum of 250 km/h. The first scheduled journey of an ICE4 with passengers on the high-speed line between Cologne and Frankfurt took place in December 2017 as a train journey from Dortmund to Stuttgart. On August 7, 2018, an embankment fire broke out near Siegburg, injuring 32 people and leaving nine houses uninhabitable for the time being. On the evening of April 14, 2021, two test runs with an ÖBB Railjet set took place on the Cologne-Rhine/Main high-speed line. The set was pushed by 1116 234 and reached 230 km/h between Siegburg and Frankfurt Airport. Between November 25 and the night of December 2, 2023, the line was completely closed for a week to renew tracks and switches and to carry out work in tunnels and on noise barriers.[164] The line was closed from July 16 to August 12, 2024 in order to renew tracks and 13 switches on a 70 km long section of the route. Around 50 million euros were invested in this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Köln HBF: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Siegburg/Bonn HBF: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lahntalbrücke: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Limburg Süd: I would also be very happy about this route if it were to appear in Train Simulator 2024 Classic. Best regards BR430
