Nuremberg 1835: When the first–ever steam engine in Germany set off on its maiden voyage it was accompanied by huge expectations. People hoped it would work miracles, put an end to the current economic crisis, modernise society and help bring about national unity. The six kilometre stretch of railway between Nuremberg and Fürth was indeed the beginning of a development which was to catapult Germany into a new era. From then on the world was a little smaller. In no time at all townsfolk were travelling by train to picnic in the countryside and workers pouring in from the countryside to the towns. The industrial age had donned its seven-mile-boots, and progress took its inexorable course.
The DB (German Railways) in Nuremberg traces all these developments up to the present-day. Equipped with the latest exhibition techniques the museum offers visitors a fascinating tour through 175 years of German railway history: from a splendid VIP’s “waiting-room”, to a railway garden with (stuffed) goats, and from King Ludwig II’s saloon car to the latest Inter City Express. Several different model railway layouts illuminate the changes which have occurred in town and country over the decades; and would-be train drivers can get their money’s worth on a computerised simulator. The outside site is particularly popular during fine weather as it contains two old signal boxes and a museum railway.

Whenever a locomotive appeared the tireless rattling of its wheels was a sure sign of activity. Whereas nascent heavy industries had previously been forced to rely on canals and rivers to transport their goods, there was now a means of transportation available which could carry even the heaviest of loads speedily and efficiently to its destination. And where previously a journey by coach and horses had been simultaneously expensive and exhausting, day-trippers could now simply consult a timetable and hop on a train for a trip to the mountains or the seaside. The coming of the railways not only gave a fresh boost to technical developments it transformed the economic, political and cultural life of the whole country. By the second half of the 19th century it had already become a mass means of transport; and by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 a grand total of 62,000 kilometres of railway track had been laid. In 1920 the German Reich Railway was set up, the first unified state railway concern. In the following decade technical developments led to a craze for speed, symbolised in the record-breaking run of the Rail Zeppelin and in the famous high-speed rail coach, the “Flying Hamburger”. But after the Nazi seizure of power the bubble of enthusiasm burst when the Reich Railway was instrumentalised as a logistic pillar in Hitler’s policies of annihilation. At the end of the –Second World War German railways developed in two different directions: in East Germany the railways had to assert themselves against the constraints of socialist planning; and in West Germany they had to fight for survival against the ever-growing popularity of the motor-car. It was only in 1989 when the divided country was re-united that the separate developments came to an end.
The Nuremberg DB Museum documents this turbulent history with a variety of different strategies, including models, simulators, live-experience spaces, an original extant station concourse and around 30 historic and contemporary railway vehicles.