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The Gotha–Leinefelde railway connects Gotha and Leinefelde in the German state of Thuringia

Thuringia

The Free State of Thuringia is a state of Germany, located in the central part of the country.It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen states....

. It was opened in 1870 by the Thuringian Railway Company

Thuringian Railway Company

The Thuringian Railway Company was a company that existed from 1844 to 1886 for the construction of railways in the Thuringian states.-History :...

 . The line is about 67.1 km long. Regional-Express line 612 services operate every two hours on the line between Göttingen

Göttingen

Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...

 and Chemnitz

Chemnitz

Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the Free State of Saxony, Germany. Chemnitz is an independent city which is not part of any county and seat of the government region Direktionsbezirk Chemnitz. Located in the northern foothills of the Ore Mountains, it is a part of the Saxon triangle...

 and Zwickau

Zwickau

Zwickau in Germany, former seat of the government of the south-western region of the Free State of Saxony, belongs to an industrial and economical core region. Nowadays it is the capital city of the district of Zwickau...

. Erfurter Bahn operates services every two hours using Regio-Shuttle

Stadler Regio-Shuttle RS1

The Stadler Regio-Shuttle RS1 is the first widely-used, new generation, diesel railcar in Germany for local railway services. Its most characteristic feature is the trapezium-shaped window frames...

 diesel multiple units. The running time is 40 minutes (Regional-Express) and 65 minutes (Erfurter Bahn) each way. It is thus part of the fastest connection from Jena

Jena

Jena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...

, Weimar

Weimar

Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...

 and Erfurt

Erfurt

Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...

 to Hanover

Hanover

Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

.

History

Already in the 1840s proposals for a railway from Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 to Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

 via Thuringia was under discussion. When construction of the Hanoverian Southern Railway (Hannöverschen Südbahn, Hanover–Göttingen–Kassel

Kassel

Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...

, opened in 1854) and the Werra Railway

Werra Railway

The Werra Railway is a single-tracked main line with a standard gauge of 1,435 mm in Thuringia and Bavaria in southern and central Germany, that runs mostly along the river Werra. It runs from Eisenach via Meiningen to Eisfeld and, formerly, continued to Coburg and Lichtenfels. It was opened...

 (Werrabahn, Eisenach

Eisenach

Eisenach is a city in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated between the northern foothills of the Thuringian Forest and the Hainich National Park. Its population in 2006 was 43,626.-History:...

–Meiningen

Meiningen

Meiningen is a town in Germany - located in the southern part of the state of Thuringia and is the district seat of Schmalkalden-Meiningen. It is situated on the river Werra....

–Coburg

Coburg

Coburg is a town located on the Itz River in Bavaria, Germany. Its 2005 population was 42,015. Long one of the Thuringian states of the Wettin line, it joined with Bavaria by popular vote in 1920...

, opened in 1859) started, a connection was planned from these lines to Mühlhausen

Mühlhausen

Mühlhausen is a city in the federal state of Thuringia, Germany. It is the capital of the Unstrut-Hainich district, and lies along the river Unstrut. Mühlhausen had c. 37,000 inhabitants in 2006.-History:...

. From Göttingen to Leinefelde the line was shared with the temporary western end of the Halle–Kassel line

Halle–Kassel railway

The Halle-Kassel Railway is a 218 km long main line operated by the Deutsche Bahn in Germany, which links Halle in Saxony-Anhalt with Kassel in the state of Hesse. It is mainly used by regional and east-west goods trains...

 (Nordhausen

Nordhausen

Nordhausen is a town at the southern edge of the Harz Mountains, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Nordhausen...

–Leinefelde–Arenshausen

Arenshausen

Arenshausen is a village in the Eichsfeld district of Thuringia, Germany....

–Friedland–Göttingen, opened in 1867). However, the countries involved (Hanover

Kingdom of Hanover

The Kingdom of Hanover was established in October 1814 by the Congress of Vienna, with the restoration of George III to his Hanoverian territories after the Napoleonic era. It succeeded the former Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg , and joined with 38 other sovereign states in the German...

, Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

, Saxe-Weimar

Saxe-Weimar

Saxe-Weimar was one of the Saxon duchies held by the Ernestine branch of the Wettin dynasty in present-day Thuringia. The chief town and capital was Weimar.-Division of Leipzig:...

 and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Saxe-Coburg and Gotha or Saxe-Coburg-Gotha served as the collective name of two duchies, Saxe-Coburg and Saxe-Gotha, in Germany. They were located in what today are the states of Bavaria and Thuringia, respectively, and the two were in personal union between 1826 and 1918...

) for a long time could not agree on an alignment, in particular the southern terminus (Eisenach, Gotha or Erfurt) was controversial. In the end, they agreed on Gotha, allowing construction to begin in 1868. In 1870, it was opened to traffic. The line connected with the existing line from the east (the Thuringian Railway, opened in 1847) in Gotha station

Gotha station

Gotha station is the main station of Gotha in the German state of Thuringia. It is served by InterCity trains and every two hours by Intercity-Express trains on the Thuringian Railway...

 in order to connect with the Werra Railway. This means that passengers still usually have to change trains in Gotha to reach Erfurt. The originally planned extension from Gotha to the south was never built.

However, progress has been made on other north-south routes. In 1876, part of the route later known as the North–South railway opened between Friedland and Bebra

Bebra

Bebra is a small town in Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in northeastern Hesse, Germany.-Location:Bebra lies some 45 km south of Kassel on the Fulda. The town is easy to find on most maps thanks to its prominent location on the Fuldaknie...

 (the Bebra–Göttingen line), which is shorter and can accommodate higher loads (it has grades of up to 1:80 compared to over 1:50 for the Werra Railway). As early as 1884, the line between Arenshausen and Friedland was abandoned, so that trains from Gotha to Göttingen had to be change direction in Eichenberg

Neu-Eichenberg

-Location:Neu-Eichenberg lies near the three-state common point shared by Hesse, Thuringia and Lower Saxony between Kassel and Göttingen .-Neighbouring communities:...

.

In 1880 the Leinefelde–Silberhausen section of the line became part of the Cannons Railway

Cannons Railway

The Cannons Railway is the vernacular name of a former German military strategic railway between Berlin and Metz via Güsten, Wetzlar, Koblenz and Trier...

 (Kanonenbahn) and this section was duplicated. As a result of the Treaty of Versailles

Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...

, the Leinefelde–Silberhausen section was reduced to one track in 1919/20.

By 1945 the railway the Leinefelde-Gotha line was mainly used for regional services with a few D-trains (D-Zügen, long distance express trains) between Erfurt and Hanover. During the period of East Germany’s existence (1945–1990) there were no direct services between Erfurt and the Eichsfeld

Eichsfeld

The Eichsfeld is a historical region in the southeast of Lower Saxony and northwest of Thuringia in the south of the Harz mountains...

 district.

Following German reunification

German reunification

German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...

 the line between Arenshausen and Eichenberg was re-opened in 1990, with services operating to Kassel. Since the completion of the Eichenberg curve in 1998, services have run to Göttingen. From 1993 to 1997 direct services ran on the Gotha curve between Gotha Ost and Erfurt, bypassing Gotha station. The Gotha–Leinefelde line is now served by tilting train

Tilting train

A tilting train is a train that has a mechanism enabling increased speed on regular rail tracks. As a train rounds a curve at speed, objects inside the train experience centrifugal force. This can cause packages to slide about or seated passengers to feel squashed by the outboard armrest due to...

s operating at 160 km / h.