Nuremberg is the central venue for Railway Year 2010 because it is here that 175 years ago, the first German train took to the tracks. On 7 December, 1835, the steam-driven "Adler" started off from Nuremberg’s Plärrer square towards the neighbouring city of Fürth. The locomotive, imported from Britain, shortened the journey time for the distance of slightly over 6 km from one hour by horse-drawn carriage to just under a quarter of an hour by rail.
This brought success to the Ludwigs-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (Ludwig Railway Association) which had 450,000 passengers in its first year. But steam engines and railways also became the driving force of industrialisation and brought an economic upturn to Nuremberg which became the industrial centre of Bavaria in the course of the 19th century.
