Changes to the railway timetable New ICE line between Bonn and Berlin
Düsseldorf · From Sunday, a new timetable will apply to long-distance rail services. There will be some changes between North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin.
The Deutsche Bahn wants to offer more seats on the important long-distance route between Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia. Deutsche Bahn has announced a new ICE line Berlin-Wuppertal-Cologne/Bonn for this Sunday's timetable change. It will run every two hours and will no longer be divided or coupled in Hamm, as the railway reported in Düsseldorf on Wednesday. This should reduce the journey time between Cologne and Berlin by up to ten minutes. The ICE trains via Dortmund and Düsseldorf will then be able to run every two hours with twice the capacity. For Bielefeld, the change will mean around 40 per cent more ICE stops to and from Berlin, according to Deutsche Bahn.
There will also be improvements to the Berlin-Hannover-Cologne ICE feeder trains: Among other things, they will continue to travel to and from Aachen three times without changing trains instead of once previously, although in one case only from April due to construction work.
Three direct connections per day and direction are still planned between Münster and Berlin, now all with the ICE.
There will also be changes on the Cologne-Bremen-Hamburg route. Three journeys will be converted from Intercity to ICE, including one return journey to and from Rügen. The evening Sprinter at 6.06 pm from Cologne to Hamburg (arrival: 9.50 pm) with intermediate stops only in Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen and Münster will be cancelled. Instead, there will now be a later ICE at 19.36 from Cologne to Hamburg (arrival: 23.46) with intermediate stops in Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Münster, Osnabrück and Bremen.
In future, travellers will be able to travel directly to the East Frisian coast by train on Saturdays: An existing ICE train from Stuttgart will in future be routed via Münster and Emden to the Norddeich Mole ferry terminal without changing trains. (Arrival: 12.59 pm). The return journey is at 2.53 pm.
The two-hourly intercity line Berlin-Osnabrück-Rheine-Amsterdam will be half an hour faster because the use of new locomotives will eliminate the time-consuming change of locomotives at the border.
New night trains to Berlin and Salzburg are also planned three times a week.
(Original text: dpa; Translation: Mareike Graepel)
