Title: History of rail transport in Germany - Wikipedia
Headings: History of rail transport in Germany
History of rail transport in Germany
Contents
Forerunners
Railways before 1871
Development
The first German railways
1840s
First trunk lines
Central European network
European network
State railway ambitions
The Länderbahn era (1871 to 1920)
Nebenbahn
Important lines
Deutsche Reichsbahn (1920–1945)
Transition period (1945–1949)
Deutsche Bundesbahn (1949–1994)
Deutsche Reichsbahn (DR) (1949–1994)
Deutsche Bahn (1994–present)
See also
References
Notes
Further reading
In German
External links

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Railways before 1871
In the first half of the 19th century, opinions about the emerging railways in Germany varied widely. While business-minded people like Friedrich Harkort and Friedrich List saw in the railway the possibility of stimulating the economy and overcoming the patronization of little states, and were already starting railway construction in the 1820s and early 1830s, others feared the fumes and smoke generated by locomotives or saw their own livelihoods threatened by them. Development
No. 302 of the private Mecklenburg Railway, built in 1866
The political disunity of three dozen states and a pervasive conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the 1830s but the growing importance of the Zollverein made the construction of a coherent infrastructure a necessity. The initial impetus to build was hampered by complicated negotiations on land ownership. However, by the 1840s, trunk lines did link the major cities; each German state being responsible for the lines within its own borders. During the 1820s, the nobility favoured costly and economically inefficient (but prestigious) canal projects over railways.