Berlin-Hannover railway line closed for 14 months – diversion via Braunschweig and Magdeburg

Since early morning there have been no trains running on the route between Berlin and Hanover. The line has been taken out of service, said a railway spokeswoman when asked. It will remain closed for the next 14 months and will be extensively renovated. During this time, all long-distance trains will be rerouted via Braunschweig and Magdeburg and will take around 80 minutes longer. This also affects all connections between Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia that regularly travel via Hanover.

In regional transport, commuters in many places have to resort to replacement buses. There are special restrictions for passengers to and from Wolfsburg, where no long-distance trains will stop at least until the end of the year. Stendal is also no longer an ICE stop. It is still unclear whether this will remain the case in 2027. Magdeburg will receive three additional ICE connections in the direction of Hanover and North Rhine-Westphalia as well as to and from Berlin.

Hundreds of kilometers of switches, tracks and overhead lines will be replaced on the route, and around two dozen stations will be modernized, as the railway announced. The reason for the long closure is the renewal of more than 50 kilometers of solid concrete road around Stendal.

Actually, from the timetable change in December of this year, the long-distance trains were supposed to run on the Lehrter Stammbahn, which runs parallel to the renovation route. But the electrification of this route is taking significantly longer than planned and will not be completed until December 2027.