page_title: Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle high-speed railway
section_title: Commissioning
hierarchical_section_title: Erfurt–Leipzig/Halle high-speed railway / History / Commissioning
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Lastenzug
context_page_description: The Erfurt–Leipzig/ Halle high-speed railway is a 123 km-long high-speed line in Germany between Erfurt and Leipzig and Halle.
  It is listed in the Germany's Federal Transport Plan as "German Unity Rail Project no 8.1" and is a section of the Munich–Berlin high-speed route, part of the Line 1 of Trans-European Transport Networks and on the east-west axis between Dresden and Frankfurt. To the north, it connects with the previously completed Berlin-Halle and Leipzig railways and to in the south with the Nuremberg-Erfurt high-speed railway, which was opened in December 2017. The travel time from Munich to Berlin has been reduced to about four hours.
  The design speed is largely 300 km/h, reduced to 160 km/h on the branch to Halle. 15.4 km of the 123 km-long high-speed line is located in three tunnels; the six viaducts of the route together are more than 14.4 km long. With a length of approximately 6465 metres, the Saale-Elster Viaduct is the longest bridge structure in Germany and the longest bridge on a long-distance railway in Europe. The Unstrut Viaduct at 2668 m is the second longest railway bridge in Germany.
  Scheduled operations commenced on 13 December 2015.
caption: Load test of the Saale-Elster Viaduct with two heavy freight trains (August 2014)
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