Breitspurbahn

Track gauge
Break-of-gauge - Dual gauge
Gauge conversion (list) - Bogie exchange - Variable gauge
Rail track - Tramway track
by size mm ft′ in″   Broad   Brunel 2140 7′ 0¼″   Indian 1676 5′ 6″   Iberian 1668 5′ 5⅔″   Irish 1600 5′ 3″   Russian 1520 4′ 11⅚″   Standard (Stephenson) 1435 4′ 8½″   Narrow/Medium   Scotch 1372 4′ 6″   Cape 1067 3′ 6″   Metre 1000 3′ 3⅜″   Narrow   Three foot 914 3′   Bosnian 760 2′ 5⅞″   Narrow/Minimum   Fifteen inch 381 1′ 3″ North America - South America - Europe

Proposed route map 1942.

Models of double-deck wagons at the DB Museum, Nuremberg.

The Breitspurbahn (German pronunciation: [ˈbʁaɪtʃpuːɐ̯baːn], translation: broad-gauge railway) was a planned 3 m (9 ft 10 ¹⁄₈ in) broad-gauge railway, a personal pet project of Adolf Hitler during the Third Reich of Germany, supposed to run on 3 metre gauge track with double-deck coaches between major cities of Grossdeutschland, Hitler's expanded Germany.

History

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

After the Machtergreifung (seizure of power) of Hitler and the NSDAP, plans for war were laid out and secret preparations started. As commercial and civilian traffic had increased due to economic stimulation by the NSDAP, Deutsche Reichsbahn was now faced with a serious capacity problem. As a result, in part driven by their military objectives, Hitler and the NSDAP began to prepare plans to modernize the railway network and increase transport capacity

In May 1942, Hitler enthusiastically embraced a suggestion from Fritz Todt to build a new high-capacity Reichsspurbahn (Imperial Gauge Railway) with notably increased gauge, and made this one of his favourite pet projects. Objections from railway experts - who foresaw difficulties in introducing an incompatible gauge (and proposed 4-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 personally 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, BBC, Krupp, but did not develop beyond line planning and initial survey.

Tracks

Originally proposed as a 4 metre track, the Breitspurbahn was developed with a track width of 3,000 mm (9 ft 10 ¹⁄₈ in), over double the width of the common standard gauge track, and around three times the width of the common narrow gauge similar 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 steel-concrete walls embedded in the ground with the rails fixed on top, with an elastic material between rail and concrete. Without sleepers this would also have formed an ideal road for maintenance and military purposes.

Vehicles

The proposal was that high-performance-locomotives should pull 8-axle double-floor carriages with a length of 40 metres (130 ft), and width/height of 6 metres (19 ft 8 in) (width) / 7 metres (23 ft 0 in) (height). The trains would be fitted with a restaurant, cinema, swimming pool, barbershop and sauna. The whole train would have a length of about 500 metres (1,600 ft), allowing a capacity of between 2,000 and 4,000 passengers, travelling at speeds of 200 kilometres per hour (120 mph). Various designs of locomotive were proposed, from steam to diesel, all requiring power of between 24 000 - 40 000 PS (18 - 29 MW).

Proposed routes

• East-West: Rostov - Stalino - Poltava - Kiev - Lviv - Kraków - Katowice - Wrocław - Cottbus - Welthauptstadt Germania (Berlin) - Hanover - Bielefeld - Ruhrgebiet - Aachen - Liège - St. Quentin - Paris
• North-Southeast: Hamburg - Wittenberge - Welthauptstadt Germania (Berlin) - Leipzig - Gotha - Bamberg - Nuremberg - Munich - Simbach am Inn - Linz - Vienna - Bratislava - Budapest - Belgrade - Bucharest - Varna/Burgas - Istanbul
• North-South-Parallel: Welthauptstadt Germania (Berlin) - Dresden - Ústí nad Labem - Prague - Jihlava - Znojmo - Vienna - Trieste - Rome
• East-West2: Munich - Augsburg - Stuttgart - Karlsruhe - Metz - Reims - Paris - Marseille - Spain

For further routes, see German version and Dutch version.

References

• Die Breitspurbahn, Anton Joachimsthaler. Herbig, 1996. ISBN 3-7766-1352-1
• Broader than Broad: Hitler's Great Dream: Three Meter Gauge Rails Across Europe, Barnes, Robin. Locomotives International. 1998. ISBN 1-900340-07-0

External links

• breitspurbahn.de Pictures of the "Breitspurbahn"