By train
Rail lines that crossed the border before they were cut.
Related methods: driving through
5 December 1961
The last train to freedom
Locomotive driver Harry Deterling drove a passenger train at full speed through the terminus at Albrechtshof and across the border into West Berlin.
27 November 1962
Otfried Reck – the S-Bahn tunnel plan
Two friends tried to open a ventilation shaft to the North–South S-Bahn tunnel near the Nordbahnhof and stop a westbound train; discovered, they ran away and 17-year-old Otfried Reck was shot in the back.
14 March 1964
The wheelchair on the S-Bahn to Zoo
Two young men, one of them posing as a frail wheelchair user, broke open the lift to the westbound platform at Friedrichstraße and let the S-Bahn staff help them onto a train to Bahnhof Zoo.
January 1965
Through a cut grille between the S-Bahn platforms
A young West Berliner who had fled himself the year before cut a grille beneath the glass wall between the S-Bahn platforms at Friedrichstraße so that his girlfriend could slip through.
8 March 1980
Hitch-hiking on the U8
An East Berlin U-Bahn signal mechanic led three relatives through a disused connecting tunnel to the West Berlin U8 line, stopped a western train with his signal lamp and asked for a lift.
12 December 1981
Thomas Taubmann jumps from a freight train under the Bösebrücke
On the evening of 12 December 1981 Thomas Taubmann climbed onto a freight train leaving Pankow and jumped off beneath the Bösebrücke, right at the border. He was found dead on the tracks.
27 May 1983
The S-Bahn hijacking at Friedrichstraße
A 24-year-old forced his way into an S-Bahn driver's cab with an air rifle and tried to make the train run on into West Berlin; it stopped short of a buffer stop and he was overpowered by officers of the passport control unit.
13 January 1989
Ingolf Diederichs dies jumping from an S-Bahn at Bösebrücke
The 24-year-old climbed out of a moving S-Bahn train with a home-made folding ladder near the Bornholmer Straße crossing, got caught on the train and was killed.
