• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Westbahn goes west: New KISS trains will also connect Munich

Status
Not open for further replies.

Stephen Lee

On Moderation
Joined
7 Jul 2019
Messages
675

It is a great news that Westbahn will extend service to Munich and I heard that Westbahn will co-operate with Bavarian Meridian in which which through connections will be provided with WESTbahn´s KISS 2 train sets. I wondered will the KISS 2 from Westbahn be coupled up to a Bavarian Meridian FLIRT in Germany.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

LNW-GW Joint

Veteran Member
Joined
22 Feb 2011
Messages
19,550
Location
Mold, Clwyd
Isn't it just a ticketing deal with Meridian?
ie just an organised connection between the two services at Salzburg?
The Meridian trains are nice enough, but they are semi-fast at best.
 

Austriantrain

Established Member
Joined
13 Aug 2018
Messages
1,307
Isn't it just a ticketing deal with Meridian?
ie just an organised connection between the two services at Salzburg?
The Meridian trains are nice enough, but they are semi-fast at best.

There will be two-hourly direct trains Vienna - Munich. I don’t think they will run in Meridian‘s paths though; will be faster and with less stops.
 

WestCoast

Established Member
Joined
19 Jun 2010
Messages
5,574
Location
Glasgow
There will be two-hourly direct trains Vienna - Munich. I don’t think they will run in Meridian‘s paths though; will be faster and with less stops.

Interesting. Did they not announce plans to start this a few years ago but it never happened?
 

Austriantrain

Established Member
Joined
13 Aug 2018
Messages
1,307
Interesting. Did they not announce plans to start this a few years ago but it never happened?

Let’s see how it works out for them. They haven’t been to successful expanding from their basic hourly Vienna - Salzburg service until now.
 

LNW-GW Joint

Veteran Member
Joined
22 Feb 2011
Messages
19,550
Location
Mold, Clwyd
There will be two-hourly direct trains Vienna - Munich. I don’t think they will run in Meridian‘s paths though; will be faster and with less stops.
I see there will be 6 through trains each way per day on the Vienna-Salzburg-Munich run, from December this year.
Westbahn unveils Kiss 3 double-deck EMUs to celebrate sustainable travel pass | News | Railway Gazette International
December 2021 will mark the 10th anniversary of Westbahn services, and the company announced that from the timetable change on December 12 it plans to step up its Wien – Salzburg service to provide 29 trips each way. Six trains in each direction will be extended to and from München; these will call at München Ost to allow easy interchange to S-Bahn Line S8 serving München Flughafen.
 

Austriantrain

Established Member
Joined
13 Aug 2018
Messages
1,307
The extension of WESTbahn-trains to Munich will most likely not happen by December 2021. Apparently their new Stadler KISS have not yet been approved for Germany. A new date is not known at this time.

Incidentally, this requires short-term timetable changes in Austria: since the Wien - Salzburg line is the only long-distance service without a PSO, WESTbahn have managed to pinch paths away from ÖBB and „taking over“ a Takt hub on the way (Amstetten) - since their fare structures are not integrated, apart from the „Klimaticket“, and there is thus no through-ticketing, this was always a bad decision. Now that these WB-trains, at least for the time being, will not run, ÖBB will have to retime its trains to serve that hub (otherwise, the Amstetten - Waidhofen line would have no mainline connection towards Linz).

Certainly a major drawback of combining open-access with a Takt (that’s why the Swiss don’t allow it).
 

Austriantrain

Established Member
Joined
13 Aug 2018
Messages
1,307
Open Access works with a Takt provided there are spare paths to lay it over the top. If there aren't, I agree, it's negative.

I completely agree. The problem with WESTbahn is that they insisted on a path which actually „destroys“ the Takt and there is no legal remedy against that.

What's your source for this please?

It‘s Information from an Austrian forum. The trains have not been loaded into HAFAS, the ÖBB timings have been amended in a way that would conflict with WB timings and apparently an ad for WB at Munich Hbf has been changed from „December 2021“ to spring 2022. Also, people with access to the data have confirmed that there is no German approval yet for the KISS.

Of course, once approval is done, the trains might be introduced quickly.
 

Austriantrain

Established Member
Joined
13 Aug 2018
Messages
1,307
The UK seems to have a more sensible approach here, where Lumo is laid on top of the clockface LNER service without disrupting it.

I agree. The problem is EU law - which of course is not a factor with Lumo - which allows preferential path allocation for specific services, such as Takt trains only on capacity-restricted infrastructure for PSO services. These trains are not PSO, and since the four-tracking of Wien - Linz, there is no capacity issue either. So it’s a case by case decision and the Austrian regulator has consistently decided in WB‘s favour.

Incidentally, the only reason why Wien - Salzburg is not a PSO is because of Westbahn; it was a singular political decision to allow them to enter the market, even though the faster ÖBB trains have to cross-finance the slower ones (so a PSO would have been arguable). This experiment will not be repeated on the Südbahn once the tunnels are open and rail will finally be competitive there - a PSO has already been let.

In the case of Wien - Salzburg what I would really like to see though is an end to open-access and instead allocate Takt path in a competitive way. We could have 4 Takt-tph (two fast, two interregional) instead of the confusing mix-up we have now (in which, according to the original timetable plan, the WB overtakes the ÖBB-RJ en route), with different operators which could offer their own in-House fares (in addition to a common tariff), making sure prices stay low.

What's your source for this please?

New HAFAS data seems to have been loaded very recently and the WB trains to Munich are now shown as running from 1. April 2022.
 
Last edited:

XAM2175

Established Member
Joined
8 Jun 2016
Messages
3,469
Location
Glasgow
The UK seems to have a more sensible approach here, where Lumo is laid on top of the clockface LNER service without disrupting it.
I agree. The problem is EU law - which of course is not a factor with Lumo - which allows preferential path allocation for specific services, such as Takt trains only on capacity-restricted infrastructure for PSO services.

Unless the relevant EU directive has already been removed from UK law, Lumo could stand to 'steal' good paths from LNER at the next timetable recast, could they not?
 

Austriantrain

Established Member
Joined
13 Aug 2018
Messages
1,307
Unless the relevant EU directive has already been removed from UK law, Lumo could stand to 'steal' good paths from LNER at the next timetable recast, could they not?

I don’t know how it was legally justified in the past in the UK, but parts of the ECML certainly have a good case of being capacity-restricted and I suppose a franchise used to be a PSO in EU law terms.
 

Bletchleyite

Veteran Member
Joined
20 Oct 2014
Messages
97,521
Location
"Marston Vale mafia"
I don’t know how it was legally justified in the past in the UK, but parts of the ECML certainly have a good case of being capacity-restricted and I suppose a franchise used to be a PSO in EU law terms.

Probably the latter. Unlike say DB's IC/ICE services, no UK rail service other than the open access operators is provided commercially. In a European sense our whole network is RE/RB/S.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top