On 30 August, 102 days before it officially opens for service, DB’s Member of the Management Board for Traffic Berthold Huber and Germany’s Federal Minister of Transport Alexander Dobrindt tested the fastest section of the new Berlin-Munich high speed line. Travelling onboard a modernised ICE 3 trainset at speeds of up to 300 km/h, they covered the 120 km from Bamberg to Erfurt – a journey which presently takes three hours – in a mere 45 minutes. Once revenue service begins on 10 December 2017, ICE Sprinter passengers will take less than four hours to travel from Berlin to Munich and vice versa.

DB’s Member of the Management Board for Traffic (Freight and Passenger), Berthold Huber, said: “The railway is shrinking Germany… some 17 million people living along the route are going to benefit from one of the biggest service upgrades in Deutsche Bahn’s history. From December, the new timetable will offer our customers significantly shorter journey times and better connections between intercity services.”

For Federal Minister of Transport Alexander Dobrindt, “Today’s inaugural high speed run at 300 km/h is testimony to the great strides being made to boost mobility on the Berlin-Munich line. Once this high-tech rail link enters service around a hundred days from now, the railway will in some ways be the most attractive means of transport for those journeying between Munich and Berlin. This will gain DB new customers and market share.”

(Source: Deutsche Bahn)