Disembark please! The train ends here!
- titanja1504
- Mar 18
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 19
(DE) The distance between Landshut Main Station and Munich Central Station is approx. 77 kilometres. A cyclist can cover this distance in a good four hours. In earlier, happier times, the Deutsche Bahn regional train travelled this distance in 45 minutes. The regional train in 2024 will take four hours and 30 minutes.
So how can that be?
Unfortunately, this railway story is told quite often these days.
Stranded again and again!
On 1 August 2024, Günther, a staunch rail traveller, starts his return journey from Landshut to Hamburg, his adopted hometown, at 11:30 a.m. with high hopes.
He has travelled this route countless times. He knows that he will need time to change trains at Munich Central Station because the regional trains are not necessarily very punctual, and when booking, he has factored in possible delays.
Günther is a very relaxed person and doesn't have a problem with waiting at any railway station.
But what happened that day made even his temper boil.
The regional train from Landshut to Munich usually stops in Moosburg an der Isar and Freising before reaching Munich Central Station.
About 10 minutes after leaving Landshut Main Station, the train arrives in Moosburg according to schedule on this particular August day and stands and stands and stands... for an hour on the track.
After waiting on the train for an hour, passengers are asked to leave because the train cannot continue its journey due to a signal box failure in Freising. Passengers should now wait outside the train for an alternative or find one themselves.
Loudspeakers inform the stranded passengers of this and other possibilities for reaching destinations such as the airport or the central railway station.
Anyone who originally wanted to go to Munich Airport with all their luggage is starting to worry. As a passenger, you plan several hours until check-in anyway. But this margin is now rapidly shrinking.
Anyone who, like Günther, had planned to change to a long-distance train in Munich has lost all hope of reaching their booked train.
Hundreds of passengers, some with huge suitcases in tow, were stranded at the railway station in Moosburg an der Isar that day, unable to get on or off.
Freising cannot be passed on any tracks and all routes from this location, whether to the airport, the central railway station or Munich city centre, lead via Freising. Naturally, this blocked route impacts all travelling traffic around Munich.
Travellers are at a complete loss on the platform and the station forecourt, trying to understand the alternative routes by other means of transport, about which the loudspeaker provides information. Anyone with no local knowledge or who doesn't speak German has an awful time in a situation like this.
At this point, you would need people who could provide advice and help answer the relevant questions or solve the problems. But they are no longer available at such a small railway station. No information desks! No railway staff at the station!
The automatisation of Deutsche Bahn's service is certainly not helpful at times like this.
Günther certainly makes himself useful. He advises those unfamiliar with the area or language as best he can. He translates the announcements into English and keeps calm.
He sits and waits by the track, where there is no longer a train because there has to be another train at some point. It's hard to imagine that nothing is really going to happen.
And lo and behold, a glimmer of hope appears on the horizon.
After all, there is still a train to Freising. But that's the end of the line for anything travelling on the tracks, which means neither the train nor the S-Bahn can continue.
He finally takes a bus to the airport, which is at the other end of the city and, therefore, a long way from his original destination, the central railway station.
Though the idea seems tempting, he plans not to fly to Hamburg, but he knows an alternative S-Bahn route from there via Ostbahnhof can take him to the central station.
And indeed, the plan works. Almost!
At Ostbahnhof, however, all passengers are again forced off the S-Bahn because, on this day, no S-Bahn stops at the central station or any station on the main line (the main line on which almost all S-Bahns in Munich connect the east and west). They only run from Ostbahnhof in the east to Pasing station in the west but do not serve the central station in the city centre.
If you've lived in Munich for a few years, you'll know another underground connection that isn't affected by the fiasco. Günther has this knowledge advantage and arrives at Munich Central Station 4.5 hours after his departure from Landshut.
Tourists from outside the city may have taken a little longer, as the S-Bahn and U-Bahn connections are often quite confusing for strangers, even on days when everything is working. However, those days when everything runs like clockwork are becoming increasingly rare.
So Günther finally stands in front of the DB (Deutsche Bahn) information desk in the late afternoon to enquire about a train connecting to Hamburg.
He doesn't want to change trains again and would prefer to stay with friends in Munich and continue his journey home the next day.
There are plenty of trains to Hamburg, the unfriendly DB employee at the ticket counter tells him brusquely, so he can't interrupt his journey to Hamburg until the following day unless he buys a new ticket. And after all, he had bought a super-cheap ticket, so he couldn't make such demands.
Now, of course, you could argue that by buying a discounted ticket, you had also concluded a somewhat precisely formulated contract with DB, which one of the contractual partners, DB, could not honour. After all, passengers had something in mind when booking this particular connection. You would think that if one contractual partner, namely the passenger, now has to change all their plans and lose every comfort they had booked, such as a seat reservation or a direct connection, the other contractual partner would show goodwill and postpone the day of travel.
Not at all! A ticket is a ticket for a journey from A to B, when and how it cannot, and obviously, it does not have to be guaranteed under all circumstances; only the day is fixed. Passengers have no room for manoeuvre - individual needs or not.
Very well! Nobody has money to give away, so Günther decides to take the 17:09 train, which is due to leave directly for Hamburg. He calculates that he can still catch the last underground train to Volksdorf, a district in the north of Hamburg, and leans back and relaxes.
Lucky him! But only nearly!
In Hamburg-Harburg, it's hard to believe that history repeats itself.
'Everyone, please disembark! The train ends here.'
Well, and now Günther is happy that he has neither a suitcase nor a travelling bag to carry but a rucksack on his back, so he can use his two walking sticks, which he has to use as a walking aid.
He has to hurry. The S-Bahn from Hamburg-Harburg takes him to Hamburg Central Station, but not home. There's an underground train to get there, but there's only a little time to get the last one. If he misses the connection, his only option would be to take a taxi. That would cost a good €60 for the journey.
But he makes it and arrives home at 00:35, after a 13.5-hour train journey, getting stranded five times at stations and using his walking stick to make the last underground train.
An unfortunate isolated incident? A singular event? Just one-off bad luck? - Not at all!
Some will now say that it can happen, that anyone who travels frequently by public transport has experienced something like this. After all, Germany has the largest railway network in Europe. Having lots of services would also increase the likelihood of problems.
That is all true. And yet the deterioration is evident for railway employees and travellers alike.
Several years ago, Deutsche Bahn advertised with the slogan 'Carefree travelling with the Bundesbahn'. This 2007 advertising slogan sounds like a joke in 2024.
According to current statistics, punctuality can only be expected with a probability of around 60 per cent these days.
And the railway infrastructure, i.e. the signal boxes and tracks, has been rotting away for several decades. Now, the peak of decay has passed, and everything is falling apart almost simultaneously, as railway employees publicly complain in the media.
A journey like this is no longer carefree if you have to expect that you will get stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere and there are no train attendants, service staff at the station or other helpful people from DB to answer questions, suggest solutions and take care of things.
Another example: the railway is trying to set up replacement services!
In June 2024, Carolin also got stranded on her journey from Munich via Nuremberg to Hof an der Saale. It's actually a good connection between Nuremberg und Hof, with a relatively frequent service and a journey time of one hour and forty minutes.
But shortly after Nuremberg in Hersbruck, an emergency doctor is called to the track, resulting in a 45-minute wait. When the train finally continues its journey, the valued passengers are told that they all have to get off at the next station, in Pegnitz, because the train ends there. The railway is trying to set up an emergency bus service.
In Pegnitz, a loudspeaker announcement asks travellers to wait in the station's forecourt. There is no rail replacement service far and wide, and there is no railway employee who can tell them more about the prospects of solving the problem.
The loudspeaker announcement merely said that the rail company was trying, which, of course, does not mean that they will succeed.
And what if the railway's attempts are unsuccessful and people get stuck in Pegnitz or possibly hours later in Hof?
It is now almost 5 pm. How long can you wait if you have to change to other regional trains in Hof, which don't necessarily run every hour?
Such questions and fears are not overly anxious in a situation like this.
Travellers would actually like to ask a DB employee about this. But there isn't one on site.
Five fellow travellers and Carolin, therefore, decide not to wait indefinitely but to charter a taxi to Bayreuth together and have Carolin's husband pick them up there by car and drive them to Hof.
Carolin finally arrives in Hof at 6.30 pm, having left Nuremberg on time at 1.14 pm.
In crises, humanity helps, not the app!
The annoying thing is not even the delay of a good two hours, but the danger that you can suddenly get stranded at any place, at any station, and that there is no human support, such as a trustworthy, competent service from a member of staff at these locations.
It is unsettling that the railway only 'tries' to be reliable. And it is unbearable not to be kept constantly informed about the status of things.
Of course, this is due to the universally lamented lack of staff, but not only that. Automation, from online ticket purchases to information via app, has enabled savings to be made on service staff.
In crisis situations, however, you need people who can leave standardised paths and react appropriately to the situation. People who pick up the phone and call heaven and earth to find out when and how things will continue.
Perhaps five minutes after the passengers in the taxi had left Pegnitz for Bayreuth, a bus would have turned up as a replacement means of transport. But if there is no up-to-date information, then you don't know whether you might only find out in the middle of the night that the journey can no longer be expected to continue.
You don't have to push the train! We have a locomotive!
This is what happened in the autumn of 2023 on a journey from Munich to Hof an der Saale. This regional train usually has a section attached to it that is detached in Schwandorf and continues to Prague.
The delay, which had already accumulated up to Regensburg and was even longer in Regensburg, was no longer mentioned on the train. Every railway traveller in Germany is used to this by now.
But as soon as the train had left Regensburg station, the train attendant or driver informed the passengers that everyone had to get off the train in Schwandorf, as this train would not continue to Hof or Prague—end of the announcement.
There was even an approachable train attendant, but unfortunately, he didn't know how to proceed either. We would just have to organise a locomotive! But how and when? Nobody knew.
All the travellers then stood at a loss on the Schwandorf platform and didn't know what to do next. First, passengers travelling to Prague were given precise and reliable information: there would be no more trains to Prague that day due to damage to the track.
Schwandorf may be a lovely little town in beautiful countryside on the beautiful blue Naab, but if you want to go to Prague, you won't be enthusiastic about it. Some people would have preferred to have been informed of the cancellation of their onward journey less than half an hour beforehand when still in Regensburg. This city can at least compete with Prague in terms of tourism.
I don't know what happened to those travelling to Prague, as there were no announcements about rail replacement services or offers of assistance.
The people whose destination was Hof were told by chance via the illuminated sign on the platform that a train was waiting on another platform. There was probably no member of staff to make a loudspeaker announcement.
We then learnt on the train that the replacement train had not yet found a locomotive. So we sat, waited, worried, joked, gritted our teeth and hoped!
The train attendant or driver kept announcing we shouldn't give up hope. People laughed and rolled their eyes.
And a while later, the redemptive announcement came: 'Dear passengers, I'm pleased to inform you that you won't have to push the train to Hof after all because we have a locomotive and will be able to depart soon.'
Laughter and applause!
Phenomena of our time
Of course, no one was happy about the delay and the unfortunate circumstances and the uncertainty suffered, but the situation was more bearable than the scenarios described above because a human being, a railway employee, was present, at least with his voice and his humour.
In crisis situations, people need someone of flesh and blood to talk to. People who care! Staff cuts, as planned by the railway management in 2024, are irresponsible against the backdrop of increasing unreliability on the railway lines.
Everyone in Germany, and since the problems during the European Football Championships also abroad, knows that the German railway network is dilapidated and parts of the infrastructure, such as signal boxes, are barely functional.
This is the reason for increasingly frequent malfunctions of all kinds and for delays and strandings at some railway stations.
Many more stories could be added to the ones described here. Stranded in Essen, stranded in Stuttgart...
In such cases, staff who can act as a reassuring point of contact and provide advice and assistance in solving individual problems are needed.
Display boards, loudspeaker announcements, or mobile phone apps are not sufficient in such situations. (TA)
Further information on the reasons for the cancellation of Deutsche Bahn:
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