Magistrale for Europe

The Main line for Europe (referred to as the Magistrale für Europa in German and Magistrale européenne in French) is a Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) project for the creation of a high-speed railway line between Paris and Bratislava, with a branch-off to Budapest. It was listed as TEN project No. 17 (Paris—Bratislava) by the European Commission in 1995, and is already under way.

The project is planned to be completed by 2020. It will link 34 million people in five European countries. The overall length of the route from Paris to Budapest is 1,592 km (989 mi).

Parts of the route had been served by Orient Express trains, which ceased operations in 2009. Today TGV and City Night Line rail connections exist from Paris to Stuttgart or at longest Munich. The Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) currently provide direct Railjet and EuroNight connections between Munich and Budapest.

The French part of the line is the LGV Est européenne high-speed railway. Its first section as far as Baudrecourt east of Metz has been in use since 2007 whilst the second section to Vendenheim near Strasbourg opened in July 2016. The new railway line provides a maximum speed up to 320 km/h and reduced the travel time from Gare de Paris-Est to the largely refurbished Gare de Strasbourg to less than two hours.

In Germany the line follows the Appenweier–Strasbourg railway (Europabahn) from the Rhine Bridge to Appenweier and then the Mannheim–Karlsruhe–Basel railway (Rheintalbahn) down to Bruchsal. The Europabahn is built for a maximum speed of 200 km/h while the Rheintalbahn to Rastatt Süd is for 250 km/h. The second part of the new Rheintalbahn (Rastatt Süd to Bruchsal) is to be completed by 2014. At the Bruchsal Rollenberg junction the MoE joins the Mannheim–Stuttgart high-speed railway which was built for 250 km/h. Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof is to be rebuilt as a through station in the course of the—disputed—Stuttgart 21 project.

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Wikipedia