The Bavarian Zugspitze Railway is one of four rack railways still working in Germany, along with the Wendelstein Railway, the Drachenfels Railway and the Stuttgart Rack Railway. The metre gauge line runs from Garmisch in the centre of Garmisch-Partenkirchen to the Zugspitzplatt, approximately 300 metres below Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany. The line culminates at 2,650 metres above sea level, which makes it the highest railway in Germany and the third highest in Europe. It is also the railway in Europe with the biggest height difference: 1,945 metres, the lower half being open-air and the upper half being underground.

The Wendelstein Rack Railway, sometimes just referred to as the Wendelstein Railway, is an electrically-driven metre gauge rack railway that runs up the Wendelstein in the Upper Bavarian Limestone Alps. Together with the Wendelstein Cable Car (Wendelstein-Seilbahn) it is operated by the Wendelsteinbahn GmbH. The mountain railway climbs through a total height of 1,217.27 metres. The Wendelstein Railway is one of only four working rack railways in Germany, the others being the Bavarian Zugspitze Railway, the Drachenfels Railway and the Stuttgart Rack Railway. It is also the second-highest railway in Germany, after the Zugspitze Railway, but the highest when considering only open-air railways.