Frankfurt/Main (dpa/lhe) - Train passengers on the Frankfurt - Mannheim route will have to be prepared for delays and diversions in the coming weeks. The reason for this is the new construction phase of the electronic signal box beginning on January 6th, which will set the points and signals on the Mannheim - Frankfurt route in the future, as a railway spokeswoman announced on Monday. The work is expected to last until February 10th. In order to keep the impact on passengers as low as possible, work should be done primarily at night and many individual projects should be bundled.
During this time, the IC and ICE travel up to 30 minutes longer because they are routed via alternative routes. Not all trains could stop in Mannheim, Frankfurt Airport and Frankfurt Central Station. In local and S-Bahn traffic, there are timetable changes on line S7 of the S-Bahn Rhein-Main, S8/S9 of the S-Bahn Rhein-Neckar and the RE 70 Frankfurt - Mannheim. At night, regional trains are cancelled, and the railways organize replacement bus services. Travelers should find out about their connections before embarking on their journey.
In long-distance traffic, the ICE on the Hamburg – Hanover – Frankfurt – Karlsruhe line will be diverted and stop in Frankfurt Süd instead of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. On the ICE line between Hamburg and Stuttgart, the trains cannot stop at Frankfurt Airport station due to the alternative routes.
International rail traffic to France and Italy is also affected: on the Frankfurt - Saarbrücken - Paris route, trains will be diverted between Frankfurt and Mannheim with a travel time extension of around 20 minutes. The trains running via Strasbourg do not stop in Mannheim, while two connections start or end in Mannheim and the stop in Frankfurt is omitted. The ECE trains on the Frankfurt - Basel - Milan line do not stop in Mannheim. Instead, the ECE will start around 20 minutes earlier in Frankfurt in order to continue to Italy from Karlsruhe.
