In 1982 the section between Lauenbrück and Scheeßel was upgraded, and between 1983/84 and 1986 the section between Scheeßel and Utbremen (40.1 km) followed suit (the last 9.7 km finally being completed in 1990).
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The railway is the backbone of rail passenger services between the Ruhr and Hamburg with at least one Intercity pair of trains running per hour.
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It was extended to Lüneburg by the Royal Hanoverian State Railways in 1863 and 1864, which used the Lauenburg–Hohnstorf train ferry to cross the Elbe for 14 years from 15 March 1864.
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After the fall of the Wall on 1 August 1990 an Intercity service was established on the Berlin–Hamburg line under the name of Max Liebermann, initially with former TEE carriages hauled by DB Class 601 locomotives that were hired by DR from Italy.
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With the timetable change in December 2006, the hourly Hamburg–Berlin ICE service was extended to the south (Leipzig, Nuremberg and Munich).
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This additional train was promised by Hartmut Mehdorn, the First Mayor of Hamburg, Ole von Beust, on the inaugural run, to enable citizens of Hamburg to attend an evening theatre performance in Berlin and return to Hamburg before the S-Bahn closed.
On 18 December 1843, the Prussian government granted a concession to the CME for the line from Deutz (now a suburb of Cologne) through Mülheim am Rhein, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Oberhausen, Altenessen, Gelsenkirchen, Wanne, Herne and Castrop-Rauxel to Dortmund and on to Hamm, Oelde, Rheda, Bielefeld and Herford to Minden.
It formed a junction with the so-called Kreuzbahn from Lehrte, then the most important railway hub in the Hanover region, to Celle.
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The link from Langenhagen on the Heath Railway to Celle, also called the Hare Railway (Hasenbahn), which had been started in 1913, was not opened until 15 May 1938.
Famous Hernians or Wanne-Eickelians include Jürgen von Manger, Kurt Edelhagen, Jürgen Marcus, Heinz Rühmann, Dr. Heinz Dieter Meyer, Tana Schanzara, Rudolf Witzig, Andrea Jürgens, Dr. Claudia Dollins (Geier), Yıldıray Baştürk, Jan Zweyer, Peavy Wagner, Leonie Saint and Bärbel Beuermann.
North of Alpen it had a grade-separated crossing over the former Haltern–Venlo railway, a section of the "Paris–Hamburg railway" of the former Cologne-Minden Railway Company (Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, CME).