Cologne (dpa / lnw) - The Cologne transport company (KVB) has to take around 30 trains of a public transport fleet out of service. Passengers will notice this clearly. The background is a "medium fire risk" in a vehicle series, the KVB announced on Wednesday. This had been established during investigations of the fleet. The railways would therefore have to be withdrawn from traffic from Thursday.
According to the information, the background to the check was a fire that had occurred in Cologne's Ebertplatz underground station at the beginning of October. According to initial findings, braking resistors were the cause of the fire there. As KVB CEO Stefanie Haaks explained, some vehicles were then checked again "to make sure that it was an isolated case".
During the checks, however, a "medium fire risk" was found for the series. A final report is not yet available. But according to Haaks, the affected vehicles should now be withdrawn from traffic. "It is planned that new software will be installed that controls the whole thing," she explained. The new software should then eliminate the risk of fire.
Passengers must now be prepared for longer waiting times on lines 3, 5 and 13 until November 5th. However, according to the KVB, line 13 will run twice at the soccer game of 1. FC Köln next Sunday.
