Crowdfunding to kick-start new Stuttgart - Berlin service

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CHamilton

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A email from Locomore:

Locomore reaches important milestones services will start December 14th, 2016

It is done! We were able to finalise - after long negotiations - two of the most important contracts which enable us to provide our new train service between Stuttgart and Berlin.

With SRI Rail Invest GmbH, we signed jointly a rental contract for eight passenger carriages. These carriages will be fundamentally modernised for our first line between Stuttgart and Berlin. People travelling with

Locomore can now choose between different options. Besides the classic compartment wagons, there will be climatised coaches which also contain a saloon area. In the saloon area new and modern seats offer another seating choice. Our coaches will run at a maximum speed of 200 km/h. All coaches provide tables, power plug sockets and WIFI.

We also finalised an agreement with the Swedish rail company Hector Rail which will be responsible for train operations. We are pleased that Hector Rail will operate with their own, modern Siemens locomotives (BR

182) and run daily operations with their own engine staff.

After we managed to secure 539,000 as our basic financing via crowdfunding from October til May, the final start of our services is now determined. Unfortunately, we can not stick to the original plan to start in September. We will begin offering our services on Wednesday, 14th December 2016, shortly after the regular timetable change. Ticket sales are planned to start at the end of September.
 
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If your in Berlin Germany this month.

Innotrans is Sept 20-23 2016

On Sept 24-25 the outdoor part is open to general public.

Locomore will have some of there equipment on displayed.
 
Air conditioning is a very recent invention. Germany into recently has not been a high temperatures area. Has and still have long summer breaks. So air conditioning is a newer features for railcars. Open the windows was the standard cooling. High speed rail cars need the window closed, that meant air conditioning. To have a single coach rebuilt to have air conditioning is a selling point, but not yet a given system wide. It may be a requirement to get people to ride today, but it still a new feature.
 
I remember riding air conditioned trains in Germany/Austria in the mid/late 80's unless I'm very sadly mistaken (at least on express trains, local trains, open windows were the norm).

I spent a chunk of that summer in Austria and then traveled north to Stockholm where the average temperature was a lot milder, yet air conditioning in buildings was far more widespread and even prevalent there.
 
Local trains the norm was open windows. Now a lot of those trains have been replaced by new Multiple Unit trains with sealed Windows. Taking some of the fun out of it. But you can still find some that have the open windows. The ALEX trains, some regional trains in south Germany mostly. Now if you go to Poland I think you can honestly ride in open doors if I remember correct.
 
I remember riding air conditioned trains in Germany/Austria in the mid/late 80's unless I'm very sadly mistaken (at least on express trains, local trains, open windows were the norm).

I spent a chunk of that summer in Austria and then traveled north to Stockholm where the average temperature was a lot milder, yet air conditioning in buildings was far more widespread and even prevalent there.
If I'm not mistaken there have been air conditioned trains in Germany since at least the 1950s,

I'm not sure whether the pre-war Rheingold had air conditioning but definitely the TEE trains of the 1950s did.

Some TEE-era air conditioned cars are still running today.

The former luxury trains such as the TEE were later rebranded as Intecity and Eurocity but retained the same equipment initially, but more equipment was added as services expanded and train lengths grew with formerly first class only trains offering both classes.

by the 1980s the situation was that most inter city trains were mixed. Typically the first class was all air conditioned and the second class was a mix of air conditioned and non air conditioned cars, with the non aircon cars being of older designs (originally built for the D-Zug services but subsumed into inter city service as this cannibalised the formed D-Zug category) and generally being added to meet peak loads. Some of these cars are still running today.

The introduction of ICE trains in the early 1990s meant that you could for the first time get trains that would be consitently air conditioned throughout in both classes.

Air conditioned cars for local trains also started appearing around that time. The first were the bi-level cars. Later some older cars were also rebuilt. Today its a bit of a mix.
 
I just saw a photo of a train the UK (Coronation Express iirc) from the late 30's indicating that it was air conditioned, though I have no idea if it actually was what we would call air conditioned. I found the direct translation to be hilarious more than the train actually being air conditioned.
 
Well ticket are on sale.

There have a lot of issues (bugs) with there system. Mobile system is not working, you have to use there desk top version. Limited payment options. No US credit or debit cards.
 
Update: Service has started. Some problems.

Limited coaches. They only have 4 coaches available. Another will arrive in the next week. Two more in January.

They have add two rental coaches to the trainset. Free hot drink if your seated in one.

Multi issue with the on-board sales due to communication issues. (Wifi dead spots)

Still having booking issues with there web sites, which is overloading them with e-mail from customer seeking support.
 
And down they go.

Locomotor is now running only 5 days a week. On going need for maintenance there claiming. They will be try to get back up to 7 days a week in April. Seem the Wifi and working bathroom, and lack of spare coachs to do any kind of maintenance is the issue.
 
No, just underfunded, with a GM who had a history of business partners cutting him out.

Iowa Pacific is desperate to find a business model to focus on, and has been in trouble for years.
 
There seems to be a long history of small operators going in with high hopes only to see they have overestimated the difficulty of running trains.

Think Wrexham & Shropshire, Iowa Pacific, Interconexx
 
Wrexham & Shropshire has a book out from the management team. Good read if you can get a copy.

Locomore sent out a E-mail today. The 5 day a week operated plan is helping with the maintenance issues. The two days they aren't running is helping to catch up on the backlog e-mails. However they issued a one-time discount code. Asking you to ride more offen as the total ridership is a good number but there still in the red.

If I jump on a airplane this week, it will be some place warm where I land.

.
 
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Random update. Back to 7 days a week in April. Ten passengers cars on property. Eight in use on weekends. Which is keeping the maintenance issues at bay. 2 of cars are rentals. The rest are painted and rebuild to there specific. The engines are contract so far no issues. Still not happy with ridership on certain portions. Still trying to raise funds.

Love how you can rent passengers cars in Europe. If we here in the states had this opportunity.

.
 
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Random update. Back to 7 days a week in April. Ten passengers cars on property. Eight in use on weekends. Which is keeping the maintenance issues at bay. 2 of cars are rentals. The rest are painted and rebuild to there specific. The engines are contract so far no issues. Still not happy with ridership on certain portions. Still trying to raise funds.

Love how you can rent passengers cars in Europe. If we here in the states had this opportunity.

.
I rode this service a month ago. The cars definitely where old despite the updating. The conductor was super friendly (he even had ridden Amtrak more than me). I got on at the end of the run in Heidelberg so the bathrooms where unusable. Train was fast and only ran about 5 minutes late So all in all a mixed bag.
 
Dear Locomore friends,

since 14.12.2016, Locomore has seen 70,000 passengers on board. Especially on Fridays and Sundays, our goal of 1,000 daily passengers has been achieved. Many customers are happy to see new colours and more choice in the German long distance market. Product features such as the upmarket organic coffee set new standards that can no longer be denied by competitors. Aligned with our goal to bring more customers on rails, many of our passengers have indeed found their way to Locomore from other modes of transport.

Final Summer Schedule.

Locomore CEO presented the final Locomore summer schedule in Berlin today. From 6.4.2017, Locomore operates on 6 days per week with daily operation in weeks with public holidays. However, this also means that Locomore will not have daily operations throughout the year, as planned before. The reason is that the results of the first months show that days with low demand in the market are very though for a new competitor like Locomore. Therefore, it is economically not reasonable to run 7/7 throughout the year. Concentrating on peak days, we aim for break-even during summer months. Customers that have already booked a ticket for one of the trains which doesn't run, can rebook cancel their ticket free of charge and will be informed via email today. That email contains further informations.

Fleet growth for peak season.

On peak days, we have already been sold out on many days. Therefore, we rented 4 additional former IR-coaches. We can therefore run with up to 10 coaches per train throughout summer.

New Connection: Berlin - Dortmund/Düsseldorf/Cologne starting in 2018

The next connection Locomore is planning to launch runs from Berlin to Hannover, Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Cologne. We plan to start operation in spring 2018.

Best wishes from the Locomore-team in Berlin
 
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