Breitspurbahn

The Breitspurbahn (German pronunciation: [ˈbʁaɪtʃpuːɐ̯baːn], translation: *broad-gauge railway*) was a planned 3,000 mm (9 ft 10+1⁄8 in) broad-gauge railway, proposed during the time of Nazi Germany, supposed to run with double-deck coaches between major cities of *Grossdeutschland*, Hitler's expanded Germany, and neighbouring states.

## History:

Since reparations due after World War I had to be paid, the German railway company Deutsche Reichsbahn lacked money for appropriate expansion and sufficient maintenance of their track network and rolling stock.

Commercial and civilian traffic increased due to economic stimulation after the rise of the NSDAP and Hitler's seizure of power. Deutsche Reichsbahn was now faced with a serious capacity problem. As a result, in part driven by its military objectives, the government began to prepare plans to modernize the railway network and increase transport capacity. Hitler believed that the standard Stephenson gauge was obsolete and was too narrow for the full development of railways. Also, as Hitler envisioned the future German empire as essentially a land-based Empire, the new German railways were imagined as a land-based equivalent of the ocean liners and freighters connecting the maritime British Empire.

Hitler embraced a suggestion from Fritz Todt to build a new high-capacity *Reichsspurbahn* (Imperial Gauge Railway) with notably increased gauge. Objections from railway experts – who foresaw difficulties in introducing a new, incompatible gauge (and proposed quadruple track standard gauge lines instead), and who could not imagine any use for the vast transport capacity of such a railway – were ignored, and Hitler ordered the *Breitspurbahn* to be built with initial lines between Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich and Linz.

The project engaged commercial partners Krauss-Maffei, Henschel, Borsig, Brown, Boveri & Cie and Krupp, but did not develop beyond line planning and initial survey. Throughout World War II, 100 officials and 80 engineers continued to work on the project.

## Proposed Routes:

Early plans for routes considered India, Iran, Syria, Vladivostok and Canada (via Bering Strait) as the ultimate goals of the railways, but by 1943 the planning was focused exclusively on European cities. Ukraine and the Volga Basin were seen as especially important targets, as these areas were viewed as the future granaries of Greater Germany, potentially through the "settlement strings", or *Siedlungsperlen* of the proposed Wehrbauer settlements within the conquered territories, which would also be linked by the planned easternmost reaches of the Reichsautobahn freeway network. Due to mountainous terrain, the initial phase routes of Aachen-Paris and Budapest-Bucharest were drawn via Antwerp instead of Liège, and via Belgrade instead of the Hungary/Romania border respectively.

* East-West: Rostov - Donetsk - Poltava - Kyiv - Lviv - Kraków - Katowice - Wrocław - Cottbus - Welthauptstadt Germania (Berlin) - Hanover - Bielefeld - Ruhrgebiet - Aachen - Liège - Saint-Quentin - Paris
	+ Initially proposed the Flemish corridor as Aachen - Antwerp - Ghent - Paris
* North-Southeast: Hamburg - Wittenberge - Welthauptstadt Germania (Berlin) - Leipzig - Gotha - Bamberg - Nuremberg - Munich - Simbach am Inn - Linz - Vienna - Presburg - Budapest - Bucharest - Varna/Burgas - Istanbul
	+ Initially proposed the Serbian corridor as Budapest - Belgrade - Bucharest
* North-South-Parallel: Welthauptstadt Germania (Berlin) - Dresden - Aussig - Prague - Iglau - Znaim - Vienna - Trieste - Rome
* East-West 2: Munich - Augsburg - Stuttgart - Karlsruhe - Metz - Reims - Paris - Marseille - Barcelona - Madrid

## Tracks:

Originally proposed to run on a 4,000 mm (13 ft 1+1⁄2 in) track, the *Breitspurbahn* was ultimately developed with a track gauge of 3,000 mm (9 ft 10+1⁄8 in), more than double the width of the common standard gauge track, and three times the width of the common semi-narrow metre gauge track. Planning called for a ballastless track (much as was developed 30 years later for San Francisco BART and 40 years later for German high-speed lines) which consisted of two parallel pre-stressed concrete "walls" sunk into the ground, joined at the top by a flat transverse slab. The rails were fixed on top of the "walls", with an elastic material between rail and concrete. Because it did not have conventional railway sleepers, this track would also have formed an ideal road for maintenance and military purposes. The rails would be either 155 pounds per yard (77 kg/m) (Pennsylvania special; 8-inch (200 mm) tall) rails or proposed 190 lb/yd (94 kg/m) (height-width ratio of 1:1) rails. The passing loop length would be more than a mile (11⁄2 km).

The intended Russian territory included within Hitler's *Lebensraum* (sub-*Breitspurbahn* system) plans had been using the slightly wider 5 ft (1,524 mm) and 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in) Russian gauge since the mid-19th century, barely half the width of the 3-meter gauge that was eventually chosen.