Germany - VIAS GmbH, VIAS Rail, Rurtalbahn
For a full scale picture, please click on the picture shown !
VIAS GmbH and VIAS Rail
VIAS was founded by Stadtwerke Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main mbH (the city transport of Frankfurt) and Rurtalbahn. For some time
parts of VIAS were owned by the Danish state railways DSB, but today VIAS GmbH and VIAS Rail GmbH are fully owned by the R.A.T.H. group.
These two companies run two rail lines, one from Frankfurt west to the Rheingau area and to Koblenz and eight rail lines along the Odenwaldbahn
Pfungstadtbahn, Rheingau-Linie and Rheingau-Loreley-Express lines. VIAS is using Lint railbuses, Flirt electric multiple units as well as Itino
railbuses.
This one is a LINT54, similar to the DB Baureihe 622. They have been built 2011-2023. It's a 54,27 meters long diesel railbus with MTU diesel
engines. Their top speed is 140 km/h.
Picture from Düsseldorf Hauptbahnhof 18.4.2026 by Ilkka Siissalo.
This one is a Bombardier Itino. The type Itino comes originally from the company ADtranz, which already in the 1990s designed a family of one,
two and three cars long diesel railbuses. But then ADtranz went belly up and was dissolved. The one coach version is now called RegioShuttle RS1
and it is produced and has been further developed by Stadler Rail of Switzerland. The two coach version became this what today is the
Itino. There are two and three cars long Itino trains. Itinos just like the RS1 have MAN diesel engines, similar with the ones used in buses.
Whereas the RS1 was a true success, Itino was not. Several Swedish private rail companies bought Itinos, but there were really a lot of technical
problems with them, which meant that the whole type became commercially a flop. In Germany only a handful of Itinos are used, only 27 trains
in total. The key users in Germany are Erfurter Bahn in eastern Gerany and Vias.
Vias uses these Itino trains of its Odenwaldbahn service between Hanau, Darmstadt and Eberbach. The trains are owned by the local authroities
through their company Fahrzeugmanagement Region Frankfurt RheinMain GmbH and Vias is just the operator.
Picture from Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof 3.6.2022 by Ilkka Siissalo.
Vias' Stadler FLIRT train at Frankfurt am Main. Vias uses FLIRT trains in the direction of Frankfurt to Mainz-Wiesbaden-Rüdesheim-Koblenz,
south along the river Rhein.
Picture from Frankfurt am Main Hauptbahnhof 3.6.2022 by Ilkka Siissalo.
A FLIRT train of Vias on its way from Frankfurt to Koblenz is stopping at the station of Hattenheim.
Picture 16.12.2016 by Ilkka Siissalo.
The famous wine producing village of Rüdesheim with a Vias FLIRT stopping at its station by the shoreline of river Rhein.
Picture 16.12.2016 by Ilkka Siissalo.
Rurtalbahn
Rurtalbahn is a small private rail operator with its headquarters in Düren. It is now 75% owned by the R.A.T.H. gruppe which is also the majority
owner of VIAS. Rurtalbahn started as Dürener Kreisbahn in 1993. Dürener Kreisbahn is today Kreis Düren and it owns the remaining 25% of Rurtalbahn.
In the beginning the company used old but renovated VT98 railbuses from the 1960s, the so called Uerdinger Schienenbussen operating on two minor
train lines, Jülich-Düren and Düren-Heimbach. This is one of those VT98 railbuses. This one was built in 1961 and it worked first for DB and the
Eisenbahnen und Verkehrsbetriebe Elbe-Weser GmbH (evb). Today this one is a museum train officially owned by the Eifelbahn Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH
(EVG) but is operated still by Rurtalbahn.
Picture from Linz am Rhein 18.4.2026 by Ilkka Siissalo.
Today Rurtalbahn's passenger traffic is operated by these Alstom Lint 54 railbuses and RegioShuttle railbuses built by Stadler. This is one of the
Lint 54 trains on its way to Heimbach.
Picture from the small stop of Blens 27.9.2029 by Wikipedia user Dew442. Published under the
Creative Commons attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license
