During the Easter holidays, the railway will close one of the most important connections in the western Ruhr area for two weeks. Due to construction work, all train traffic between Essen and Duisburg will be stopped from March 31 (9 p.m.) to April 14, the railway said.
Many trains are also canceled further east between Essen, Bochum and Dortmund and between Düsseldorf and Duisburg. Important connections in long-distance traffic and 14 lines in local traffic are affected. Train passengers sometimes have to accept long detours by train or change to significantly slower buses.
The train announced that the numerous changes were included in the online information provided by the train. If you look for your connection there and enter a date during the Easter holidays as the travel date, you can see how you can get to your destination despite the construction work.
Restrictions for train passengers even after the holidays
"We deliberately bundled a lot of construction work during the Easter holidays because then fewer commuters are on the road," said a railway spokesman. For a total of nine million euros, seven kilometers of tracks would be renewed in Duisburg, Oberhausen and Essen, switches replaced and the power supply for the trains modernized. This would create the conditions for more trains to be able to run on the heavily used route in the future.
The cities on the important east-west axis between Dortmund and Duisburg will be completely cut off from long-distance traffic during the two weeks. ICEs and ICs will then not stop in Mülheim/Ruhr, Essen and Bochum. There will also be some failures in Duisburg, the railway said. Trains between Düsseldorf and Berlin, for example, would be diverted. Travelers would have to be prepared for longer travel times - also because there are construction works on the route in other federal states at the same time.
The restrictions for rail travelers in the Ruhr area are not over even after the holidays. The railway had already announced that due to the numerous construction sites, all trains around the Duisburg junction should not run regularly again until the beginning of July.
