Last sunday andreas reuter had enough, and he wrote to the tageblatt: "for some weeks now, there have been daily disruptions (massive delays, one or two train cancellations almost every day) on the nurnberg-sonneberg RE trains, which travel between bamberg and coburg on the ICE route to coburg." Also on sunday the regional express (RE) was cancelled, which started at 7am.38 o’clock should have gone to bamberg.
There were also disruptions in the opposite direction on sunday: the regional express train to sonneberg arrived too late in coburg and then did not continue to thuringia at all, so that the passengers in sonneberg, who had arrived at 9 a.M., had to wait for the train to arrive.07 o’clock had to wait another hour.
Reuter writes that he has not received any response from the railroad to his request for information. It had already happened to him several times that he wanted to get on a train to coburg in bamberg, which was first announced as delayed and then did not arrive at all. "At the moment, the DB does not guarantee a reliable transport of the passengers between sonneberg and bamberg, because it can be assumed that every day trains are cancelled or cancelled. Are massively missed.", he writes.
The problem is known to the railroad, and they also know the cause – it’s the locomotives. The RE trains in question run over the new ICE line to bamberg and must therefore be equipped with an ETCS train control system. However, only five locomotives are available to the railroad for this purpose. Four are in daily use (two on each train), one serves as a substitute, according to a spokesman for the railroad. "At present, two locomotives are experiencing different vehicle failures, so that individual regional express trains are running via lichtenfels." Locomotives can run on this line without ETCS. "The employees of the workshop are working flat out to eliminate the disruptions. According to the current status, the vehicles will be available again at the end of this week at the latest", affirms the railroad spokesman.
The railroad had to have an interest in ensuring the punctuality of its trains, says agnieszka urban, spokeswoman for the bavarian railroad company (BEG). The BEG orders the train service for the regional connections; the direct connection coburg-bamberg by regional express was not established until the timetable change in december 2017. "Within the framework of our transport contracts, we specify concrete minimum punctuality values and impose contractual penalties if the transport companies do not achieve the required values. In the event of train cancellations, the transport companies do not receive any payment from us, declares urban. In short: in case of delays and train cancellations, the railroads will pay for it.
As far as the train cancellation on sunday in sonneberg is concerned, according to the railroad and BEG, it had a different cause: a vehicle fault occurred in sonneberg that could not be repaired. A replacement vehicle was also not available at short notice, so that the train was completely cancelled.
Andreas reuter would like to be sure that as a teacher he can plan class trips by train, as he writes. "I don’t want to be stranded in the evening in bamberg, for example, with more than 20 ten- to eleven-year-old schoolchildren and have to inform the parents that they have to pick up their children in bamberg."
What also bothers reuter is the sparse information for travelers about train cancellations and delays. In the coburg train station, the rough display board in the hall has not been working for weeks; if you want to know whether your train is late, you have to rely on the displays on the platforms. But the announcements on the platforms do not work. The railroad spokesman sighs that this is due to outdated technology. The plan was to replace it at the end of june anyway. But it had broken down prematurely and could no longer be repaired.