Thanks to the high speed ICE north-south rail connection which is part of the project VDE 8, the travel time between Berlin and Munich in Bavaria will be reduced to only four hours. The section of the 500 km long railway line that is being extended and currently under construction is funded by the European Union and Deutsche Bahn. As a supplier of materials and expertise, Dyckerhoff is playing an instrumental role in the success of this project.

Dyckerhoff has been supplying materials since 2009 for the construction sites between Altenfeld and Gehren where the Silberberg tunnel is located, the second longest tunnel along the entire section. Dyckerhoff also supplied the ready-mix concrete for the construction of the bridge over the Saubachtal and the Unstruttal, plus the Osterberg tunnel in the section between Erfurt and Leipzig. To ensure smooth delivery to these construction sites, movable concrete batching plants were installed in Altenfeld, Mohrenbach and Blessberg. Together they produced a total of 700,000 m³ of structural concrete, 300,000 m³ of which is Spritz Beton.
The most ambitious part of the project was without a doubt the Silberberg tunnel, which is impressive not just for its length of 7,391 meters but also because of the problems that had to be overcome to construct it. The most southern section of the line, from Nuremberg  to Erfurt, which also includes the Silberberg tunnel, will become operative in 2017.