The timetable change on December 11 will not be a good day for the Hessian State Railway.

As of that Sunday, the state-owned company lost the contract to run the trains on its very own route from Frankfurt-Höchst to Königstein to a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn.

After almost 125 years.

"It really is a tragedy," says Managing Director Veit Salzmann.

Because the Frankfurt-Königsteiner Eisenbahn, founded in 1901, is the nucleus of today's Hessian State Railway, which, however, has long been on the road on many more routes.

Manfred Koehler

Head of department of the Rhein-Main editorial team of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

But the competition is tough.

And just as the state railway has often taken over operations on the Deutsche Bahn's routes in tenders, this will now replace them on the main route for the next few years.

This does not change the ownership of the tracks themselves, and the workshop of the Hessian State Railways in Königstein will continue to operate, at least for the time being.

In fact, the state railways will continue to run for a few more months because of the problems with the delivery of the new hydrogen-powered trains for the new operator.

But none of this changes the fact that in the foreseeable future there will be no more regional railway trains making their way from Frankfurt to the small town in the Taunus region.

The Landesbahn has also lost the connection from Höchst to Bad Soden.

Of the 70 employees affected, 30 will remain with the Landesbahn, 40 will switch to the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary Start, which will offer transport in the future.

Workshops in Wiesbaden and Siegen remain

The fact that Salzmann coped with the defeat in the tender for traffic on these two connections by the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund is not least due to the fact that the company operates the Mittelhessen-Express network from the 2023/2024 timetable change, which are trains from Frankfurt via Gießen to Dillenburg on the one hand and Schwalmstadt-Treysa on the other hand as well as between Hanau and Friedberg.

Rail transport companies measure their performance in train kilometers, i.e. in the kilometers that their trains travel over the course of a year.

According to Salzmann, with the Mittelhessen-Express, the Landesbahn will gain 4.3 million train kilometers, while losing only 1.2 million with the two routes to Königstein and Bad Soden.

In 2024, the company will drive a total of 30 million kilometers in its extensive network after 27 million in the year that is coming to an end.

And who knows what will happen next.

The commitment in central Hesse could become even stronger if the state railway wins the current tender for the Main-Lahn-Sieg network.

The ongoing growth course is also reflected in the construction of a large workshop in Butzbach, according to calculations in February an investment of 85 million euros;

However, Salzmann refers to the general increase in construction costs since then, which should also lead to higher expenses in this case.

In the short term, the decision was made to no longer heat the system for the maintenance and repair of trains with natural gas, but to use geothermal energy and photovoltaics instead;

in fact, so much electricity is to be generated that part of it can be used to run the trains.

After the completion of the workshop in Butzbach, the current locations in Limburg, Königstein and Frankfurt-Griesheim will be abandoned;

the workshops in Wiesbaden and Siegen remain.

External business is also to be acquired for Butzbach, and the state railway has set up a subsidiary specifically for this purpose.

In addition, the state railway would like to expand the reactivation and maintenance of rail lines as a business area;

the plan is to take over and prepare a freight train line near Lollar from Deutsche Bahn.

At the beginning of next year, Salzmann will have a second managing director: Tobias Beckers, who has been with the company since 2009.

In the future, Salzmann will be spokesman for the management board.

The fifty-seven-year-old also sees this as the beginning of a smooth transition in the executive floor;

Beckers is just 37 years old.

Regarding the current collective bargaining dispute in the company, Salzmann says that wage increases had long been agreed, but that he did not consider the increase in holiday entitlement by six to 40 days to be appropriate.

Although employees who use the six days received a smaller wage increase, this does not compensate for the additional costs for additional staff;

these costs cannot be shouldered.

If there is a strike, we will try to continue operations.

The managing director is satisfied that there are currently only a few train cancellations due to Corona.

However, the company is suffering from staff shortages in DB Netz signal boxes, which would have consequences for the entire train operation.

The Landesbahn is still looking for staff: 35 positions are currently vacant in the future workshop and 40 positions for train attendants.