Germany - Articles and news items

The role of the Federal Network Agency

Issue 2 2011 / 6 April 2011 /

The German rail market is – due to its size of infrastructure and number of customers and its central transit position within Europe – a very interesting target for domestic and foreign train operators. Both the European legal framework and the German Railway reform programme of 1994 encouraged liberalisation of – in 2010 – about 180 railway infrastructures on a network of approximately 75,000 kilometres of rail tracks and 500 service facilities like harbours, shunting yards, terminals and maintenance facilities (the infrastructure managers), enforcing their open access to hundreds of railway undertakings (RUs). Since many of them do both, altogether we count more than 500 infrastructure managers (IMs). (more…)

“We are consolidating and strengthening our European network”

Issue 2 2011 / 6 April 2011 /

Thanks to strong companies, and cooperation and joint ventures with partner railways which have matured over the years, DB Schenker Rail offers rail freight services throughout almost the whole of Europe. DB Schenker Rail comprises the three regions East, Germany/Central and West. The regions are supported by central functions such as production, sales management, finance and human resources. Business activities in the Region are carried out by highly efficient subsidiaries, which act, according to market requirements, either as full railway companies or as pure operating companies. Above and beyond this, specialised sales, forwarding or logistics companies are active in national and cross-border markets1. In an interview for European Railway Review, Dr. Alexander Hedderich, CEO of DB Schenker Rail, explains how the company is moving forward and its commitment to strengthen its European network. (more…)

AKN – attractive public transport for Northern Germany

Issue 2 2011 / 6 April 2011 /

With 128 years of tradition in railway traffic, AKN Eisenbahn AG looks back on a proud history. Operating 39 double traction wagons, AKN’s service is of utmost importance to ca. 12 million passengers a year, as it opens up metropolitan Hamburg and the interior of Schleswig-Holstein to the public. AKN’s overall rail network extends across the south of Schleswig-Holstein and has a range of 260km.

AKN services a total of 76 train stations in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein and has a workforce of 314 in a variety of technical and commercial professions. Since 1998, AKN’s corporate headquarters with a workshop and office building is based in Kaltenkirchen, playing an important role in contributing to the optimisation of traffic flows in the business districts of Hamburg/Schleswig-Holstein. (more…)

The railway system in Germany

Issue 2 2009, Past issues / 26 March 2009 /

To be able to appreciate which functions the Federal Railway Authority (EBA) fulfils, it is worth taking a cursory glance at the German railway market first. Ranking high within Europe, its hallmark is the vast array of organisations.

The public railway network in Germany covers some 38,000km of route, a good 20,000km of which are electrified by Germany’s standard 15 kV and 16 2/3 Hz current system. This route network is looked after by approximately 160 public infrastructure operators, just under 33,000km of the network being operated by DB Netz AG.

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Maintenance workshops are key driver for rail success

Issue 2 2009, Past issues / 26 March 2009 /

Arriva Deutschland has an increasingly visible presence on the German rail network with trains travelling millions of kilometres per year and moving tens of thousands of people each day. The unseen driving force behind this success is Arriva’s network of rail workshops which ensures our fleets are ready for service every day.

Getting more than 210 trains into service and making sure they are maintained and ready to meet the daily needs of a busy timetable is a challenge which we, like many other rail operators, have to face.

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Today’s challenges for the railways in Germany

Issue 2 2009, Past issues / 26 March 2009 /

100 years ago, railways in Germany had no serious competition. Their share of the freight transport market was 70%. Not until the 1930′s was there a change, brought about by the rise in road transport. Due to technological progress and by being more flexible and customer focused, road haulage was able to rapidly gain market shares.

The cumbersome and complex bureaucratic machinery of the railways was hardly able to reverse the progress, quite the contrary: The railways kept losing market shares and piling up debts. In order to bring these trends to a stop and preserve the railways as an economically and ecologically meaningful mode of transport, the German Bundestag adopted the reform of the railways in 1994.

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Investing in rolling stock for future performance

Issue 2 2009, Past issues / 26 March 2009 /

Train operating companies obviously need reliable and robust rolling stock in order to provide efficient and effective services to their passengers. This is of course an obvious fact to point out, but an imperative issue nonetheless.

Deutsche Bahn AG (DB AG) needs no introduction in this German Profile issue of European Railway Review, but the company has made many recent orders for new rolling stock and I think it is important to take this opportunity to highlight the important investments that the company is making to ensure their passenger services are first class.

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DB Netze weathers the economic crisis

Issue 2 2009, Past issues / 26 March 2009 /

Substantial sums are being spent on upgrading the German rail network. The German government has long held plans to introduce private capital into the holding of Deutsche Bahn AG (DB AG). This part privatisation has been postponed on account of the world economic crisis, but DB has been reorganised to make it easy to do so when conditions are more favourable.

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New rail freight traffic for 2015

Issue 3 2008, Past issues / 28 May 2008 /

This article discusses new technologies, dimensions and production systems for rail freight traffic – based on genuine situations in Germany.

The growth of goods traffic in Europe that has come along with globalisation and the actual discussions about the environmental impact of the transport sector require new concepts to increase the efficiency of rail freight traffic. The predicted growth of rail freight will soon exceed the capacity of today’s railway system. For this reason, operational innovations which will impact promptly will be necessary in order to cope with the expected growth at a customer-friendly service level. The intended enhancements of the network – which are necessary as well – may be implemented too late. In the view of many customers, rail freight is too inflexible, too expensive and too slow in comparison with other means of transport. However, the environmental friendliness and safety reasons speak in favour of it.

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DB to add 1,000km to the high-speed network

Issue 3 2008, Past issues / 28 May 2008 /

In a recent presentation from Dipl.-Ing. Wolfgang Feldwisch of DB Netz AG given at the UIC High-Speed show in Amsterdam, ambitious plans for enlarging the German high-speed network were explained.

The first German high-speed rail lines were planned in the 1980s, when the Iron Curtain dividing the country was still in place.

Historically, the main transport corridors in Germany had been east-west routes centred on Berlin. With the division of the country, West Germany needed better north-south links. Accordingly, the first high-speed lines ran north-south, from Hannover to Würzburg and Mannheim to Stuttgart. These pioneer routes, opened in 1991, and have maximum speeds of up to 280km/h.

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Milling – the new dimension of rail-profiling

Issue 3 2008, Past issues / 28 May 2008 /

It was in 2003 when Linsinger Maschinenbau GmbH from Austria launched its new version of the Rail Milling Train SF 03 FFS for German Railways, DB AG, and Alpha-Rail Team for the German Railway Market. Since then, the rail milling technology of Linsinger started a matchless and incomparable victory lap in the national railway marketplace in Europe, as well as within the international railway and light rail market, especially in Asia.

Used since 1995 throughout Europe from different railway organisations, this highly sophisticated state-of-the-art rail profiling technology has now become the standard technology of more and more railway and light rail systems world-wide.

Linsinger rail milling technology has made a quantum leap in innovative rail treatment. By combining rail milling and grinding in a single operation with a high degree of accuracy and extended conditions of use, a significant reduction in maintenance costs can be achieved.

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Infrastructure project expertise

Issue 2 2008, Past issues / 8 April 2008 /

DB ProjektBau gathers together specialists within the DB Group from the fields of Project Management, Planning and Engineering Supervision. With expertise from a variety of domains being pooled in this way, DB ProjektBau has unique know-how that enables it to provide all services from a single source – from project conception work through to completion. With orders of between €2-3 billion a year and approximately 4,000 employees, it is one of the largest infrastructure service providers in the rail transport sector.

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