COLOGNE (dpa-AFX) – Long-distance and regional trains will no longer run at one of the most important train stations in Germany for ten days: The railway has started construction work on a new signal box at Cologne Central Station. Until the morning of November 24th, travelers can only get to the main station in the city of over a million people by S-Bahn or U-Bahn.
The construction work that was actually planned during the closure cannot be carried out as planned. At the last moment, the railway discovered errors in the software for the new signal box and therefore postponed its commissioning until next spring.
Then the long-distance and regional tracks at Cologne Central Station will have to be closed a second time – but not for as long as this time. “What we can already tell passengers is that the second closure will be shorter,” said Matthias Gramer, regional manager at the rail subsidiary InfraGo, which is responsible for infrastructure.
Problems at one of the most important train stations
The top priority now is to solve the software problem quickly so that the new electronic interlocking can go into operation. The error, which was only discovered at short notice, was not foreseeable, emphasized the railway. Every year more than 50 new signal boxes are put into operation in Germany. It is very regrettable that there were problems at Cologne Central Station of all places.
The ten-day closure of Cologne Central Station to long-distance and regional trains can now still be used to prepare signals, switches and overhead lines for control from the new signal box. When the closure takes place next year, old signals that are still needed for train traffic will have to be dismantled. But that would be quicker.
Transport Minister: “Piece from the madhouse”
NRW Transport Minister Oliver Krischer (Greens) heavily criticized the railway for the two closures. “It’s of course a piece from the madhouse, there’s no other way to put it. And it’s a mystery to me how something like this can happen at the DB,” said Krischer in the WDR2 interview.
The minister particularly criticized the fact that the decision was made at such short notice not to put a new signal box into operation despite the long lead time. “We’ve been planning this for a long time. And then I found out two days in advance: April, April – the software cannot be installed because it doesn’t work,” said the minister. “You can’t imagine that at all.”
ICE trains stop at train stations on the outskirts of Cologne city
During the ten-day closure, many ICE trains stop just outside at the Ehrenfeld or Messe/Deutz train stations instead of at the main train station. From there, travelers can take the S-Bahn to the main station – because it is controlled from a different signal box and is not affected by the closure. The best way to see online information is to see how your connection is working despite the construction work, Deutsche Bahn advises.
Even in regional transport, some lines such as the RE 1 (Aachen-Hamm) or the RE 5 (Wesel-Koblenz) largely bypass the city and therefore do not stop in Leverkusen or Düsseldorf-Benrath, for example. In total, there are diversions on around a dozen regional transport lines.
With 1,300 trains and hundreds of thousands of travelers every day, Cologne Central Station is a central hub for rail traffic in western Germany./mhe/DP/he