Rastatt. The Murg, directly north and east of Rastatt, formed a defence line which they defended with great tenacity. Economy and Infrastructure Transport The Murg Valley Railway and the Black Forest Valley Highway (Bundesstraße 462) follow the Murg Valley. Both are amongst the most notable transportation routes in Germany for civil engineering and natural beauty. The gorge-like character of the middle Murg valley was a major obstacle to the development of the transport routes for centuries. The first road from Gernsbach to the upper valley bypassed this section: the Old Wine Road (Alte Weinstraße), as the old trading route was called, ran steeply uphill at first and then ran along the heights of the eastern flanks of the valley. It was not until the second half of the 18th century that a continuous road was built along the bottom of the valley. The construction of the Murg Valley Railway began with independent sections from Rastatt and Freudenstadt. On the Baden side the first section from Rastatt to Gernsbach went into operation in 1869, Württemberg followed in 1901 with the route from Freudenstadt to Klosterreichenbach. After several expansion stages, a continuous railway connexion was finally established in 1928, i.e. 60 years after the start of construction, and only when the respective national railways were under the sovereignty of the German Reich. Timber rafting Until the 19th century, the Murg was an important route for timber rafting in the valley. Timber merchants and sawmill owners in the Eberstein (later Baden) part of the valley merged to form the trading company of the Murg Shipping Association (Murgerschifferschaft) whose earliest statutes date to 1488. The logs felled in the middle and lower parts of the Mur valley, were floated down the Murg to Steinmauern, where they were dried and assembled into larger rafts. These were transported by Rhine raftsmen, who had a monopoly on this section, on the Rhine to Mannheim. At Mannheim, even larger floating wooden structures were built, some of which were rafted down to the Netherlands. In the 18th century, the great demand for logs from the Netherlands led to a boom in the timber trade, which led to extensive clearing of the forests until the end of the century. Instead of the Murg Shipping Association, which specialized in sawn timber and did not have enough capital to manage the log trade, other timber companies took over this business. The transportation