High-speed route
ICE
Hamburg → Frankfurt · Germany
ICE in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 490 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 34 min
- Average speed
- 137 km/h
- Top speed
- 280 km/h
- Operator
- DB Fernverkehr
- Train
- ICE 1 · Class 401
- Countries
- Germany
- In service since
- 1991
- Runs
- hourly
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Runs the Hanover–Würzburg route, Germany’s first Neubaustrecke of 1991, boring through a chain of long tunnels under the hills of Hesse.
This is the corridor the original ICE 1 was built for: the Hannover–Würzburg high-speed line, Germany’s first, opened full-length in 1991 with its chain of long tunnels through the central uplands. From Hamburg the route crosses the Lüneburg Heath, calls at Göttingen’s university town and hilltop Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, then burrows the Fulda and Kinzig valleys before Frankfurt’s towers appear over the Main. Some of the 1991 sets, rebuilt twice, still turn up on the diagram.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 1083201 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 7 m from it
- The operator publishes this line's timetable: Deutsche Bahn — a place to look it up, not a check of our drawing
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Lüneburg Heath
- Göttingen — the scholars’ stop
- Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe beneath the Hercules
- Fulda’s baroque quarter
- Kinzig valley descent
- Frankfurt skyline over the Main
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Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Frankfurt → Hamburg · Hamburg → Frankfurt.