Würzburg Hauptbahnhof has a central location in Germany and was always a major hub for rail transport, but after the division of Germany its importance increased again. While rail traffic between the north and the southeast of the country had previously been distributed over several routes, now the lines through the Thuringian Forest, the Franconian Forest and the Vogtland were truncated. All the trains that had to be operated along the Inner German border, including the routes to Munich via Würzburg and Nuremberg caused a considerable increase in the workload for Würzburg.