Zugchaos on New Year's Day: Freight coaching accident causes massive delays!

Zugchaos on New Year's Day: Freight coaching accident causes massive delays!

On New Year's Day, January 1, 2025, the ICE route between Hanau and Fulda was closed due to an incident. A freight train had lost around five tons of sugar beet near Bad Soden-Salmünster (Main-Kinzig) around 9:30 a.m. The measure caused long -distance traffic to be redirected via Aschaffenburg in Bavaria. Travelers had to expect delays of 45 minutes each. However, the route was cleared and made accessible around 4 p.m., as Hessenschau.de reported.

In a further incident, there was a freight accident between Cologne and Aachen near Kerpen. Here the railway line is expected to be blocked for several days. According to a spokesman for the railway, the necessary measures to fix the damage will take time. Four destroyed concrete masts and a steered overhead line are already known about the consequences of the accident. The accident was caused by a collision between a freight train and a construction train, whereby the wagons were partly across the rails. In this incident, three people were injured and the disorder led to train failures and delays, as T-online.de reported. The affected connections include local and long-distance trains between Cologne and Aachen as well as connections to Brussels and Paris. In addition, the ICE trains on this route were diverted into both directions, with delays of about 90 minutes. Individual ICE trains also failed and a rail replacement traffic was set up by bus, which went into operation from 9 a.m. However, there are no fixed travel times for this traffic.