failed for the time being due to the political fragmentation of Thuringia. The rulers of four Thuringian states had to give permission for a route between Arnstadt and Ilmenau. They had little interest in economic competition with their capital cities along the Leipzig–Weimar–Erfurt–Gotha–Eisenach axis. In addition, transport planners were already forging other plans, like an Ilmenau–Suhl connection, which would form part of a Berlin–Stuttgart route, and an Ilmenau–Saalfeld connection. Prussia urged Suhl (which, along with Erfurt, belonged to Prussia) to build a connection to the northern Thuringian foreland to provide an efficient access to the arms industry in Suhl. A further extension of the line via Stützerbach to Suhl, which had already been envisaged by the planners in the early planning phase, was not carried out, since no agreement was reached between the small states of the Thuringian area affected by the line and the construction costs were too high. Under this option, an approximately 2000 m-long tunnel would have been built under the ridge of the Thuringian Forest in the Schmücke/Großer Finsterberg area. When the Thuringian Railway Company (Thüringische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) proposed in 1876 to continue the line from Arnstadt to Ilmenau, difficult negotiations had to be held with the representatives of the various states. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Ernst II offered the greatest resistance. The Thuringian Railway Company knew that the Duke liked to stay in Elgersburg for recreation and they wanted to meet him with a proposal for a route that would start in the valley of the Zahme Gera and run via Geschwenda, Arlesberg (which later merged with mid-Thuringian—mittelthüringischen—Gera to form Geraberg) to Elgersburg. This plan failed initially due to the resistance of the Duke, who wanted to build a railway from Ohrdruf to Elgersburg that would have run entirely over his own territory, but also due to massive protests by the citizens of Geschwenda against the railway. The citizens feared that constant boiler explosions would ravage the country, that the smoke of the locomotives would pollute the air and make the grass bitter and that the cows would give only sour milk as a result of the sight of the monsters—common prejudices in the time, which George Stephenson also had to fight in England. The planned line running entirely through the Reichenbach valley and Martinroda was welcomed there and Martinroda was willing to provide the land for any route through it free of charge.