High-speed route
ICE
Frankfurt → Munich · Germany
ICE in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 410 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 15 min
- Average speed
- 126 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- DB Fernverkehr
- Train
- ICE 3 · Class 403
- Countries
- Germany
- In service since
- 2006
- Runs
- hourly
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Sprints down the 300 km/h Nuremberg–Ingolstadt high-speed line, one of Germany’s fastest, on gradients so steep that freight trains are banned.
The Frankfurt–Munich ICEs collect three generations of German railway building in one ticket: the classic Main valley climb through the Spessart oaks, the 1980s line into Würzburg beneath the Marienberg fortress, and the 2006 Nuremberg–Ingolstadt sprint at 300 km/h through the Franconian Jura’s cuttings. The Danube passes at Ingolstadt, then the Hallertau hop gardens see the train home across the Bavarian plateau. Around three and a quarter hours, hourly, dining car included.
How this line was checked
- The 396 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 382440 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within 30 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 98.5% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 9 m); the longest stretch away from it is 6 km
- Checked against the running timetable via Transitous: our line sits under 100 m from the shape of ICE 529
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Spessart forest climb
- Würzburg under the Marienberg
- Franconian wine slopes
- Nuremberg interchange
- 300 km/h through the Jura to Ingolstadt
- Hallertau hop gardens
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Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Frankfurt → Munich · Munich → Frankfurt.