Published on 2026-09-17
Deutsche Bahn has once again been forced to revise plans for a major corridor renovation, this time on Hannover–Berlin, after work on a parallel line fell behind schedule and eliminated a planned diversion route. The setback is the latest blow to the troubled Generalsanierung programme, which DB has now pledged to overhaul after repeated problems with long blockades and inadequate alternative routes.
DB InfraGO is due to begin work on the 227 km Lehrte–Berlin corridor on October 2, the second-longest axis in its Generalsanierung programme. The project centres on a major bundled renewal of the high-speed railway between Hannover and Berlin, an important east-west route for passenger and freight traffic, including extensive replacement of slab track around Stendal.
Running parallel to parts of the high-speed line is the older Lehrter Stammbahn, sections of which are being electrified under a separate project. DB had planned to use this route to keep trains moving while sections of the main line were closed.
The problem is that the electrification will now not be completed until December 2027, rather than the end of 2026. That leaves the parallel line unavailable for the diversionary traffic DB had planned to use during the works, forcing it to revise passenger and freight plans.
The Hannover–Berlin problems are another blow to DB’s long-term corridor closure model, emerging in the same week that CEO Evelyn Palla conceded the Generalsanierung had become too ambitious. Yet DB’s rethink will mean far fewer projects each year, despite mounting pressure to renew Germany’s ageing and increasingly unreliable rail infrastructure.
Freight diverted away from Hannover–Berlin
The works begin on October 2 under an already agreed first-phase traffic plan, which runs until December 12. The newly revised concept is mainly needed from the December timetable change, when the Lehrter Stammbahn had been expected to become available and take some of the pressure off the wider network.
DB’s new diversion map. Image: © DB AG
With that route now unavailable, DB says freight trains will instead be diverted via Braunschweig and Magdeburg during the corridor works. DB InfraGO said it is carrying out additional maintenance on that route to prepare it for the heavier traffic.
Long-distance passenger trains will also run via Braunschweig and Magdeburg from December, adding around 80 minutes to Hannover–Berlin journeys and putting both passenger and freight traffic onto the same diversion axis. DB is therefore preparing a second option for freight. From the end of January 2027 at the latest, trains will also be able to divert via Halle–Eichenberg, which is currently being modernised and expanded.
Keeping that route available has ironically forced another change to DB’s construction programme; a second phase of works on Halle–Eichenberg, originally due to begin in summer 2027, will now also be postponed to free additional capacity, particularly for freight and ad hoc services.
ETCS left for later
The scale of the works remains substantial. Alongside the corridor renovation, DB is carrying out what it describes as one of Germany’s largest ongoing electrification projects on the parallel Lehrter Stammbahn, as well as major slab-track renewal east and west of Stendal. Across the three overlapping projects, DB says around 357 km of track, more than 214 sets of points and 100 km of overhead line equipment will be renewed by December 2027.
That concentration of work is the basic idea behind the Generalsanierung. Rather than repeatedly closing the same routes for separate projects, DB has sought to bundle major renewals and upgrades into long, intensive blockades, while preparing alternative routes to keep traffic moving around them.
That would also appear to offer an opportunity to tackle Germany’s lagging rollout of digital signalling. But ETCS will not be installed on Lehrte–Berlin as part of the corridor renovation. In a parliamentary response published on September 8, the federal government said fitting the European signalling system during the works would be “technically and economically not sensible”.
That means a future ETCS rollout will still require a separate intervention on the route, including further trackside installation and possessions after the current programme is completed. For a model built around accepting severe disruption now in order to avoid repeatedly returning to the same corridor later, that is an obvious limitation.
DB scales back the Generalsanierung
Unsurprisingly, after significant pushback from freight operators, industry groups and the wider German public, DB has now accepted that the programme needs to change. Palla said earlier this month that four corridor renovations a year had proved too much to achieve in such a space of time, with the railway now planning around two annually, or three in exceptional cases. Funding will also dictate the pace.
“We will adjust the number of corridor renovations per year to the available funding,” she said, with DB also intending to spread its projects more carefully across the network and better prepare diversion routes. “We also want to pay closer attention to how corridor renovations are geographically located within the network and how they are sequentially planned,” Palla said. “We need to prioritise better; we need to better integrate construction and operations.”