The U1 is an underground line in Nuremberg. The first part of the line was opened on 1 March 1972. It is about long and has 27 stations. The termini are Langwasser Süd in the southeast and Fürth Hardhöhe in the northwest. Until 11 December 2016 it shared tracks with the former booster line U11 between Eberhardshof and Messe. Those services are still run but no longer designated U11, instead being signed U1 like trains doing the full Langwasser-Hardhöhe run. Unlike U2 and U3 all trains are operated by a driver and there are no plans to automate U1. History Unlike in Munich where line designations were based on previous tramway lines - line U6 was the first to open, but designated number 6 based on a previous tram line 6 - or Berlin where line numbers in the modern sense were only given out decades after the system opened and U1 and U2 do indeed represent the oldest part of the system, albeit with operational changes since their opening, the Nuremberg subway numbering system has always been historically based - meaning that the first line to be built was always (even in planning) designated U1, the second line U2 and so on. Consequently U1 is the first line of the Nuremberg subway line to start construction and to open for service. Construction on U1 started "from the outside in" at the new high-rise housing estate at Nuremberg Langwasser (an area that had previously served as campgrounds for visitors to the Nazi Party Rallying Grounds) and the route had initially been planned as an extension of the Nuremberg tramway network or a Stadtbahn-like subway-surface system before the city council of Nuremberg decided to build a "full" U-Bahn instead. This accounts for the tight curves along some sections of the track, as those parts of the line had been designed with tram, not subway standards. The western part of U1 represents the third rail-based corridor on a nigh-identical alignment between the neighboring cities of Nuremberg and Fürth since 1835. First the Bavarian Ludwig Railway (locally often metonymically identified with its locomotive the Adler) which shut down in 1922 in the face of German hyperinflation and after competition from a parallel tram line became to fierce. And ultimately the subway which replaced tram service in 1981 after the decision by Nuremberg city council to gradually phase out tram service, replacing it with