Known as the Marsh Railway, this train line carries cars and passengers every hour. It travels along the Hindenburg dam through the Wadden Sea, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage site. This extraordinary ecosystem provides a resting area for millions of migratory birds before they fly south.

Environmentally friendly rail transport

The Marsh Railway is one of Germany’s oldest train lines, and currently still runs using diesel locomotives. Before reaching the start of the line at Itzehoe, trains coming from Hamburg either have to be recoupled to diesel locomotives, or the passengers have to change trains. This hassle costs both money and valuable timetable space. To make the Marsh Railway more sustainable in future, a project was started in 2025 to electrify the entire 170 km line. The government of the state of Schleswig-Holstein expects this to save around 15 million litres of diesel fuel and therefore 65,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

Achieving this goal requires a modern basis for planning, and a number of comprehensive measurement campaigns were launched for this purpose. Plasser & Theurer was active with the EM100VT from 3 to 8 June 2025, measuring and collecting data across a total of 210 kilometres of track.

Digital twin with precisely located track centreline

Until recently, projects like the Marsh Railway involved complex line closures to allow staff to measure the track with special equipment. As the timetable was already extremely tightly scheduled, this was not a good option. The single-track line also would not allow trains to go around the worksite.

The EM100VT completes these tasks without interrupting rail operations. The track inspection vehicle travels along the line at up to 80 km/h, without the need for staff to enter the danger zone. It collects data from a wide range of sources. A series of 360° lasers scan the environment, high-resolution colour cameras map out the track, and ground penetrating radar looks up to 3 m down into the subsoil. An inertial system with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) scans the relative track geometry, while a dual camera system measures fixed points alongside the track as the vehicle passes by. This all results in a detailed point cloud of the track alignment design with a precisely located track position. It is this precision that makes the difference. Masts and overhead contact lines can be added to the model realistically.

Reliable planning leads to savings in construction

Although the measuring run is completed quickly, the planning itself still takes a lot of time. The digital twin may remove the need to send staff out onto the track to record planning data, but the historical train line has a number of features that need to be considered. These include bridges, underpasses, and the Hindenburg dam itself. Project Manager Kerstin Thomsen from OBERMEYER says: “We have to make sure that the ground offers the required stability at every point. For complex structures like swing bridges and bascule bridges, we develop custom solutions for the overhead contact lines and check the cost-effectiveness of various design variants.” Thomsen sees careful preparation as decisive: “The planning phase is time intensive, but is only responsible for a fraction of the costs. The actual construction work is much faster but is much more financially demanding.”