National Express Germany is a railway operator in Germany. A subsidiary of

National Express National Express Group is a British multinational public transport company headquartered in Birmingham, England. It operates bus, coach, train and tram services in the United Kingdom, Ireland (National Express operates Eurolines in conjunction ...

, it commenced trading in December 2015.

History

In February 2013 National Express was awarded two regional rail contracts in Germany by the

Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr The Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (), abbreviated VRR, is a public transport association (Verkehrsverbund) in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It covers most of the Ruhr area, as well as neighbouring parts of the Lower Rhine region, includ ...

, Zweckverband Nahverkehr Rheinland and Zweckverband Nahverkehr Westfalen-Lippe authorities that commenced on 13 December 2015. In January 2015 the Bayerische Eisenbahngesellschaft awarded National Express a contract to operate the

Nuremberg S-Bahn The Nuremberg S-Bahn (german: S-Bahn Nürnberg) is an S-Bahn network covering the region of Nuremberg, Fürth and Erlangen which started operations in 1987 and is now integrated into the Greater Nuremberg Transport Association (Verkehrsverbund Gr ...

system from December 2018. It was to have been the first Deutsche Bahn S-Bahn network to be taken over by a private operator. However, in October 2016, National Express withdrew its bid after an appeal to the award was launched by Deutsche Bahn, National Express stating an inability to order new rolling stock while the challenge was heard would make its bid unviable. In June 2015 National Express was awarded parts 2 and 3 of the Rhein-Ruhr-Express which will commence in stages between June 2019 and December 2020. Following the financial difficulties of Abellio GmbH, National Express was awarded an emergency contract to operate further services in North Rhine-Westphalia from February 2022 to run for two years. *

Rhein-Express The Rhein-Express is a Regional-Express (RE 5 (RRX)) service, which generally follows the Rhine (german: Rhein) river. It runs daily every hour from 5 am to 9 pm from Wesel via Oberhausen, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Bonn, Remagen and A ...

(RE/RRX 1) Aachen-Hamm *

(RE11) Düsseldorf-Kassel.

Services

Rolling stock

To commence operations, National Express purchased 35 Bombardier Talent 2s in 2014. These were sold back to the Rhine-Ruhr Transport Association and Westphalia-Lippe Local Transport and leased back to National Express for the duration of the contract. The Rhein-Ruhr-Express services will be operated by Siemens Desiro HCs.Rhein-Ruhr-Express depot construction launched
''Railway Gazette International'' 7 March 2017

References

{{NEXG, state=collapsed National Express companies Railway companies of Germany Railway companies established in 2015 2015 establishments in Germany Companies based in Cologne