From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Models of double-deck wagons at the
DB Museum,
Nuremberg.
The Breitspurbahn (German
pronunciation: [braɪtʃpuːrbaːn], translation: broad-gauge
railway) was a planned broad-gauge railroad, a personal pet
project of Adolf
Hitler during the Third Reich of Germany, supposed to run on 3 meter gauge track
with double-storey coaches between major cities of Grossdeutschland, Hitler's proposed
unified German-speaking state.
History
Since reparations due after World War I had to be
paid, Deutsche Reichsbahn, Germany's
railway company lacked money for appropriate expansion and even
sufficient maintenance of their track network and rolling stock.
After the Machtergreifung (seizure of power)
of Hitler and his Party NSDAP, plans for war were laid out and
secret preparations started. One of the preparation objectives was
to modernize the railway network and increase transport
capacity.
Hitler enthusiastically embraced a suggestion from Fritz Todt to built a new
high-capacity Reichsspurbahn (Imperial Gauge Railway) with
notably increased gauge, and made this one of his favorite pet
projects. Objections from railway experts - who foresaw
difficulties in introducing an incompatible gauge (and proposed
4-track standard gauge lines instead) and couldn't imagine any use
for the vast transport capacity of such a railway - were ignored,
and Hitler personally ordered the Breitspurbahn to be
built with initial lines between Hamburg, Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich
and Linz.
Tracks
The Breitspurbahn would have had a track width of 3
meters (almost 10 feet), over double the width of the common
standard gauge track, and three times the width of narrow
gauge or meter gauge track. Planning called for a ballastless track
(much as was developed 40 years later for German high speed lines)
which consisted of two parallel steel-concrete walls embedded in
the ground with the rails fixed on top, with an elastic material
between rail and concrete. Without railroad ties this would also have formed
an ideal road for maintenance and military purposes.
Bibliography
- Die Breitspurbahn. by Anton Joachimsthaler. Herbig, 1996. ISBN
3-7766-1352-1
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