Höllentalbahn

The Höllentalbahn — the Hell Valley Railway — climbs out of Freiburg and straight into the wall of the Black Forest, and it does it more steeply than any other main line in Germany.

In the twelve kilometres between Himmelreich and Hinterzarten the railway lifts itself 430 metres, on gradients reaching 57.8 per mille — steep enough that for the first forty-six years of its life the trains could not manage it on wheel-grip alone and had to be dragged up on a rack rail. The timetable still shows what that costs: a quarter of an hour, for twelve kilometres.

The line runs 76 km from Freiburg (268 m) to Donaueschingen, and the names along it are not subtle. Himmelreich means "kingdom of heaven"; the gorge above it is the Höllental, the valley of hell. Between them the train threads a ravine so narrow it is called the Hirschsprung — the stag's leap — where the rock walls, the road and the railway are squeezed together with barely room to pass.

Its masterpiece is the Ravenna viaduct: nine arches, 224 metres long and 36 metres above the floor of a wooded gorge, carrying the line across in one stride.

But the Höllentalbahn's real claim is one you cannot see from the window. In 1936 the German state railway strung this line with 20,000 volts at 50 hertz — ordinary industrial mains frequency — to find out whether trains could simply run off the public electricity grid instead of needing their own dedicated supply. They could. The experiment in this Black Forest valley became the basis for 50 Hz railway electrification worldwide, the system now used across France, Britain, China, India and beyond.

The trains that climb it today are Breisgau S-Bahn regional services, running every half-hour from Freiburg. It costs an ordinary ticket.

The Höllentalbahn front-loads everything. The drama is over within forty minutes of leaving Freiburg — after which the line settles into a high, quiet plateau of lakes and moorland that is a different pleasure altogether.

Freiburg to Himmelreich: the approach

Trains leave Freiburg (Breisgau) Hbf, at 268 metres on the floor of the Rhine valley, and run out through the city's eastern suburbs — Wiehre (280 m), Littenweiler (317 m) — before the Black Forest closes in. Kirchzarten (392 m) sits in a broad, sunny basin of farmland, the last easy ground.

Then comes Himmelreich, at 455 metres, and the name is a joke at the railway's expense: the kingdom of heaven is where the hard work starts. Ahead the valley pinches shut.

The Höllental: the steepest main line in Germany

What follows is the reason the line exists in the imagination. The train enters the Höllental — the Hell Valley — and begins to climb at up to 57.8 per mille, a gradient no other German main line matches. There is no rack any more, but there was once, and it is worth knowing why: from the opening in 1887 until 1933, trains on the ramp between Hirschsprung and Hinterzarten were hauled by locomotives engaging a toothed rail laid between the running rails. Only when engines grew powerful enough to grip the steel by adhesion alone could the rack be lifted.

At the Hirschsprung the gorge narrows to a slot barely wide enough for the river, the road and the railway together, with rock rising sheer on both sides. Trains pass each other here on a ledge above the traffic.

Higher up, the line swings out across the Ravenna gorge on the Ravenna viaduct — nine granite arches, 224 metres long, 36 metres above the stream. The bridge you cross dates from 1927; Robert Gerwig's original of 1887 was a shorter structure of 144 metres on stone piers, replaced when it could no longer carry modern traffic.

Twelve kilometres and 430 metres of climb after Himmelreich, the train arrives at Hinterzarten, 885 metres up — the highest station on the line, just below its summit point at 893 m. The gradient vanishes, the forest opens, and cows appear in meadows. You are on the roof of the Black Forest.

Titisee, the lakes and the run down

Titisee (858 m) is four minutes further on, a resort town wrapped around a dark glacial lake — the busiest stop on the route and the junction for the branch that matters.

The Dreiseenbahn, the Three Lakes Railway, leaves here for Seebrugg, running by way of Feldberg-Bärental at 967 metres, which is the highest standard-gauge station in Germany and the highest on the national network. It ends at the Schluchsee, the largest lake in the Black Forest.

The main line continues to Neustadt (805 m), where most Freiburg trains terminate, and where the character of the journey changes for good. Beyond it the railway crosses the open Baar — Löffingen (803 m), Döggingen (748 m) — descending gently through farmland to Donaueschingen (677 m), the source of the Danube, where it joins the Schwarzwaldbahn. Trains run on to Villingen.

The Höllentalbahn is worked as part of the Breisgau S-Bahn — lines S1, S10 and S11, plus RB 427 at the eastern end. It is a commuter railway that happens to climb a mountain, and it runs accordingly.

Freiburg to Neustadt is half-hourly, leaving Freiburg (Breisgau) Hbf at :10 and :40 past each hour, and taking about 46 minutes. Southbound:

The gap between Himmelreich and Hinterzarten is the whole point of the railway: fourteen minutes to gain 430 metres, and by some distance the steepest thing a scheduled German main-line train does.

Beyond Neustadt the service halves. Trains for Donaueschingen leave Neustadt at :30, reaching Donaueschingen at :09 — 39 minutes — and continuing to Villingen at :20. That makes the full Freiburg–Donaueschingen run about 1 hour 30, with a four-minute connection at Neustadt.

Good to know:

• Most travellers should ride Freiburg to Titisee or Neustadt and stop there. Everything the line is famous for happens in the first 40 minutes; the run beyond Neustadt is pleasant farmland, not spectacle.
• The Dreiseenbahn branch leaves from Titisee for Seebrugg, calling at Feldberg-Bärental (967 m), Altglashütten-Falkau (957 m), Aha (940 m) and Schluchsee (932 m). It is a short, worthwhile detour to the highest standard-gauge station in the country.
• ⚠️ Trains divide at Titisee — sit in the right half. The operator runs a Flügelkonzept: units are split and joined at Titisee (and Gottenheim) every day, one portion going on to Neustadt and the other down the Dreiseenbahn to Seebrugg. The carriage you board in Freiburg decides where you end up, so check the destination shown on your portion, not just on the front of the train.
• Not every Neustadt departure goes to Donaueschingen — the :04 workings turn back at Löffingen. Check the destination before boarding.
• Sit on the right leaving Freiburg for the gorge and the drop from the Ravenna viaduct.

Times from Deutsche Bahn's Kursbuch table KBS 727 (Breisach–Freiburg–Titisee–Seebrugg/Donaueschingen), revision date 21 November 2025, valid 14 December 2025 to 12 December 2026 — verified as of August 2026. Confirm your own train before travelling; see the operator link in the Tickets section below.

There is no special fare for the Höllentalbahn and nothing to reserve. It is a local S-Bahn service, so an ordinary regional ticket is all you need, and the steepest main-line climb in Germany costs the same as any other twelve kilometres of German railway. A regional day ticket is usually the right answer, because this is a line to get on and off, and it covers the Dreiseenbahn branch too.

⭐ If you are staying in the Black Forest, you probably travel free. Around 9,000 hosts hand guests a KONUS card at check-in, and it is a free-travel pass: unlimited second-class travel on local buses and trains across the whole holiday region for the length of the stay, for nothing beyond the local visitor tax. It covers this line and the Dreiseenbahn, though not ICE or IC trains. Ask when you book — it can make a rail pass pointless.

Like the Schwarzwaldbahn over the hill, the Höllentalbahn is an ordinary scheduled service on the national network — so every German pass covers it, and none of them is necessary.

Interrail and Eurail

Fully valid. Interrail's operator table covers RE, RB and IRE services from "DB and all other Regional carriers", which is what runs the Höllental.

That table's excluded column names FlixTrain and GoVolta, neither of which runs here — and then adds a third line that matters far more than the first two: anything not named falls to Interrail's linked list of the German companies a pass is valid on. It is a closed list of national and regional operators, which is why Germany's mountain and heritage railways sit outside every pass while an ordinary RB like this one is covered without a thought.

Nothing is reservable and nothing needs to be. Board and sit where you like — and on this line, that decision matters more than the ticket: see The Journey for which side of the train to take through the gorge.

The Deutschland-Ticket

€63 a month, digital, personal, subscription-only, valid on "allen Nahverkehrszügen (RB, RE, S-Bahn) und öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln". That covers the whole climb from Freiburg to Donaueschingen and the Freiburg trams at the bottom of it.

⚠️ Not valid on IC, EC or ICE — which matters only for getting to Freiburg, not for the journey itself.

The Baden-Württemberg-Ticket

€27 for the first traveller, €9 for each of up to four more, valid midnight to 03:00 the next morning any day of the week, on "alle Nahverkehrszüge aller Eisenbahnunternehmen und alle Verbundverkehrsmittel" — trains, trams and buses alike.

The entire line is inside Baden-Württemberg, so one ticket covers Freiburg to Donaueschingen and the buses at either end. For two people making a day of it, with a walk from Hinterzarten and a stop at the Titisee, it is comfortably the cheapest way to do this.

⚠️ Bicycles need their own day ticket on top.

And the one that beats all of them

⭐ Staying anywhere in the Black Forest? The KONUS guest card comes free with your accommodation and carries you free on this railway for the length of your stay — including the climb, the Titisee branch and the local buses. Nothing on this page competes with that, and the Tickets section explains how to get it.

Is a pass worth it for this journey?

No. This is a short, cheap regional ride, and no pass will pay for itself on it.

The honest ranking: KONUS if you are staying overnight, a Baden-Württemberg-Ticket if there are two or more of you doing it in a day, an ordinary single if you are alone and passing through — and an Interrail or Deutschland-Ticket only if you were already carrying one for other reasons.

Pass conditions checked against Deutsche Bahn and Interrail's own operator list, August 2026.

Almost everything worth stopping for on this line is within forty minutes of Freiburg, and the half-hourly service makes hopping off cheap in time as well as money.

The stops fall into three groups. Freiburg and Kirchzarten are the warm, open country at the bottom — a university city with one of the great Gothic cathedrals of Germany, and the last farmland before the climb. The Ravenna gorge and Hinterzarten are the mountain section, reached in the most dramatic twenty minutes of the journey. Titisee, Schluchsee and Neustadt are the high plateau beyond the summit: lakes, forest walks and quiet towns at over 800 metres.

If you have one day, take the train to Titisee, walk the lake, then come back down. If you have two, add a stop at Hinterzarten for the Ravenna gorge — the viaduct you crossed is best seen from the path underneath it — and run the Dreiseenbahn branch out to Schluchsee.

This is one of the easier journeys in Germany to plan a bed around, because the line is half-hourly and short: anywhere between Freiburg and Neustadt puts you within an hour of everything else on it.

Freiburg is the obvious base if you want a city — a walkable old quarter, a cathedral worth an afternoon, and the best food and rail connections on the route. It is also the warmest place on the line by several degrees, which matters in winter.

Hinterzarten is the other choice, and the more atmospheric. At 885 metres it is properly in the mountains, with forest walks from the doorstep and a century of winter-sports history behind it — the village built its first ski jump in 1923 and still hosts World Cup rounds.

Titisee trades quiet for convenience: it is the busiest stop on the line, packed in summer with day visitors from Freiburg, but it has the lake, the boats, and the branch to the Three Lakes.

One practical note that applies wherever you stay: ask about the KONUS guest card when you book. If your host is in the scheme — most in this valley are — your local train travel is already paid for by the visitor tax.