The Hamburg - Westerland line is also known as the Marschbahn and runs through the low-lying flat countryside of Schleswig-Holstein. It's a very traditional railway in many ways with loco hauled trains and semaphore signals and hosts an unusual car-carrying operation between Niebüll and the island of Sylt.
The railway crosses to Sylt on a raised causeway, the Hindenburgdamm, one of several notable civil engineering features on the line.
Freight traffic is usually sparse but two of my visits coincided with the diversion of freights to and from Denmark that would normally have used the parallel electrified main line on the east side of the Schleswig-Holstein peninsula.
Freight traffic is usually sparse but two of my visits coincided with the diversion of freights to and from Denmark that would normally have used the parallel electrified main line on the east side of the Schleswig-Holstein peninsula.