The signal box equipment was modernised at that time. New electromechanical systems replaced the mechanical systems and a new command signal box tower was built on the Hohe Brücke (bridge) that at that time carried an extension of Hohe Straße over the station's western track field. The architecture of the station was also transformed. Numerous decorations and structures were replaced by modern plain surfaces. During the Third Reich In the 1930s, Deutsche Reichsbahn built a high-speed rail network. It operated high-speed diesel multiple units on routes between Berlin and Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne and Berlin and Frankfurt among other cities. However, the connection from Dresden to Berlin was served by a high-speed steam-hauled train, the Henschel-Wegmann Train. From 1936 until the outbreak of war in 1939, the journey time from Dresden to the Anhalter Bahnhof was about 100 minutes. In the late 1930s, the Nazi Party planned to reconstruct the city with the intention of glorifying the Third Reich on an enormous scale. A new central train station to be built at Wettiner Straße station would have been 300 metres wide and 200 metres long. In addition, an oversized station courtyard and spacious streets were intended to create spaces for rallies and marches. With the outbreak of the Second World War, however, these plans lapsed. During the Second World War, the station had only minor importance for the dispatch of troop and prisoner transports, though Dresden was a garrison town. However, it connected the Saxon railway network with Bohemia and formed a bottleneck as a result. At the beginning of the war, Dresden hardly seemed threatened by air raids, so initially insufficient preparations were made and later additional preparations were no longer possible. The air raid shelters of the central station could accommodate about 2,000 people, but they lacked airlocks and ventilation systems. This had serious consequences: during the great air raid on the night of 13 and 14 February 1945 the station burned down, and the entrance to the luggage store was set alight; as a result 100 people were burned to death and another 500 people suffocated in the air raid shelters. Subsequent air raids destroyed the railway tracks entirely. The station was made permanently inoperable during the eighth and final air raids on the city on 17 April 1945 by 580 USAAF bombers. The long reconstruction In spite of its severe war damage the station was one