Exberliner Issue 167, January 2018

TRAINS
INDIE RAIL
Locomore’s
bumpy ride
It was the David to Deutsche
Bahn’s Goliath: a vintage train
that could get you from Berlin
to Stuttgart for €22 with free
wi-fi and organic food. But it
went bankrupt in less than half
a year. Now, Locomore has
been resurrected. But who’s
behind the wheel? By Jenny Browne
As the 14:28 departs Lichtenberg, a
voice rolls over the tannoy welcoming
everyone onboard Wagen 1819.
The passenger carriage is a Bmz Interregio
number from the 1980s, with vintage feel
still intact and a garish, Wes Anderson-esque
orange-and-red interior. Kids play around
with the wooden train set in the Familienabteil
(family section) as their parents connect
to the onboard wi-fi. At the bistro, a friendly
employee proffers organic, vegan snacks and
€2.30 fair-trade coffee, while posters in the
hall proclaim this train is running on 100 percent
renewable energy. If all goes well, Wagen
1819 will pull into Stuttgart in seven hours,
hitting 13 stops along the way including Hanover
and Frankfurt. The price? Under €40.
This feels like what German entrepreneur
Derek Ladewig had in mind when he started
Locomore, his long-in-the-making crowdfunded
“green alternative” to Deutsche
Bahn, in December 2016. But this isn’t his
train. In fact, it’s run by Czech rail company
Leo Express in conjunction with bus
giant Flixbus. Ladewig is still on board as a
manager, but the open-access operator (the
term for a train company that purchases
individual slots on a railway system, instead
of franchising like the national companies)
he founded just a year ago is no more.
Deutsche Bahn controls over 99 percent
of long distance rail travel in Germany;
since the country’s rail system was liberalised
in 1994, barely any companies have
tried to disrupt that monopoly. Because
rail infrastructure costs are so high (the
Infrastrukturnutzungsentgelte, or “track access
charge”, is around €5-7 per kilometre),
it’s difficult for smaller companies to turn a
profit, especially when long-distance buses
are so inexpensive to run. The country’s
first private rail company, Interconnex,
was started by the Transdev corporation
in 2002 and ran between Leipzig, Berlin
and Rostock for 12 years, but folded in 2014
after failing to rival bus prices. Another,
the Vogtland-Express between Berlin and
Plauen, ran between 2005 and 2012 before
being replaced by a bus fleet.
Ladewig, a former political scientist and
transit consultant to the Bundestag, thought
he had the answer when he founded Locomore
GmbH in 2007: stick to one route, and
choose it wisely. After initially being part of
the founding team of the Hamburg-Cologne
Express (HKX), an open-access train line
between the two western cities that finally
launched in 2012, he decided to focus on
the Berlin-Stuttgart route exclusively. After
applying for permission to use the tracks
and receiving approval, his company signed
the contract with DB Netz, Deutsche Bahn’s
subsidiary in charge of managing infrastructure.
The eight carriages, refurbished in Bucharest,
were rented to Locomore by leasing
company SRI Rail Invest GmbH.
After raising over €460,000 in crowdfunding
on Startnext, Locomore hit the
“We don’t consider ourselves
as rivals to Deutsche
Bahn,” Flixbus says of
their takeover. “We both
have the same goals:
reducing car traffic and
increasing mobility.”
Matthias Manske
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EXBERLINER 167