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Děčín–Dresden railway (Elbtalbahn)



The Děčín–Dresden railway, also called the
Elbtalbahn (Elbe Valley Railway) is an electrified main line in Saxony and the Czech Republic. Formerly called the Saxon-Bohemian State Railway (Sächsisch-Böhmische Staatseisenbahn), the line is part of the Dresden to Prague route. It runs along the Elbe Valley from Děčín via Bad Schandau and Pirna to Dresden. The Schöna–Dresden section of the line is part of the Dresden S-Bahn network. In 1848, the first section of Dresden was opened to Pirna. The first service over the whole Dresden–Děčín line ran from 1851.  Sächsisch-Böhmischen Staatseisenbahn (Royal Saxon State Railways) owned the section to the border only. The rest of the line to Děčín was leased from Austria. In 1898 large parts of the railway's premises in Dresden were refurbished amd the new Dresden Hauptbahnhof was built. The Dresden–Pirna line was expanded to four tracks in 1915, allowing a separation of long-distance and regional services. After the end of World War II in 1945, the portion of the state border to Děčín was taken over by the Czechoslovak State Railways (CSD). All passenger trains from Dresden now terminated at Schöna station before the national border. CSD served its own section of the line from then on with passenger trains from Děčín to Dolní Žleb. In 1946 the first freight trains operated, with a service between Berlin and Prague. Large parts of the German railway tracks were dismantled in the course of 1946, as reparations to the Soviet Union. As a result, the Dresden–Schöna section was reduced to a single track throughout. Between 1949 and 1951, the second track was rebuilt. At the end of the 1950s double-decker commuter trains were introduced to the route and gradually, high-quality long-distance trains returned to the through route. Scheduled electric trains did not begin operating across the border until 1992. The problem was different electrical systems. The German section is electrified at the German standard of 15 kV AC at 16.7 Hz. In the Czech Republic, lines are electrified with the 3000-volt DC system. In order to operate the route continuously using electrical traction, a dual-system locomotive was developed. 50 m of the contact wire between Schöna and Dolní Žleb at the bridge of Gelobtbach river carries no current. In this section of the line the driver lowers the pantograph and coasts through the neutral section while changing the locomotive's electrical setting. Afterwards, the pantograph is raised again. The Děčín–Dresden line is part of line 22 of the Trans-European Transport Networks  The line is also the most northern section of Pan-European railway corridor IV connecting Dresden and Istanbul.  The line is the fastest link from the Czech Republic to the North Sea ports and as such very busy with freight.

January 28th,  2025

 

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