New trains and new direct connections: The timetable change on December 11 for the railways will also bring some changes for Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland.
In the future, Deutsche Bahn will offer a daily direct connection from Saarbrücken (from 8.27 a.m.) to Munich (arrival at 12.56 p.m.). The intercity connection, which previously ran from Stuttgart via Mainz and Koblenz to Cologne, will in future run to Wuppertal, Bielefeld, Hanover, Magdeburg and Dresden, as Deutsche Bahn announced on Monday. This means that you can travel from Mainz or Koblenz to Bielefeld or Hanover without having to change trains. On this line, which runs about every two hours, new IC double-decker trains will also be on the move in the future.
According to the company, due to the construction sites in the railway network, individual long-distance trains along the Rhine that are offered in addition to hourly services cannot be offered until March 31, 2023.
At the time of the timetable change, trains of the latest ICE generation will also be running on the ICE high-speed route between Cologne and the Rhine-Main area for the first time. The ICE3neo trains are used several times a day between Cologne and Frankfurt and on the Cologne-Wiesbaden-Mainz and Dortmund/Cologne-Stuttgart-Munich connections.
The latest ICE variant can travel at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour and has more doors. According to the railways, it offers, among other things, more space for families, more space for luggage as well as tablet holders and coat hooks at every seat.
Long-distance rail travel will increase by an average of almost five percent from mid-December. The prices for Bahncards 25, 50 and 100 are also increasing.
On December 11th, the timetables for regional rail traffic will also change. The Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV), for example, announced that it would provide information about the most important changes before the date. However, a specific date for this has not yet been set.
