On 13 May 1997, the ceremonial beginning of the construction of the Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed line in North Rhine-Westphalia was celebrated in Siegburg: the North Rhine-Westphalian Economics Minister, Wolfgang Clement, Federal Minister of Transport, Matthias Wissmann, and Deutsche Bahn chairman, Heinz Dürr, operated a device symbolising three levers of a lever frame of a mechanical interlocking. As part of the ceremony, an Intercity-Express (ICE) ran from Siegburg for the first time, carrying honoured guests and 500 other specially-chosen travellers, via Cologne and Düsseldorf to Oberhausen and back.