How often is a German Train Late? I have booked a train called the ICE 220 that is from Frankfurt to Amsterdam. I, however, would be boarding the train from Cologne (Köln).

I wanna be prepped as to the wait time, if there is one and how late can we expect this train. I have been to EU back in 2023 and booked FlixBuses through the entire trip. This is my first experience with trains in EU in general and in specific to Germany.

Thanks!

by Relevant_Wish2971

14 comments

  2. They are mostly on time, often a little bit late, sometimes a lot. So you have to be at the train station at the booked time.

    But the DB App is very reliable with displaying the delays. So if a delay is foreseeable it will be displayed in the App

  3. It’s average delay was 5min in the last month: https://www.zugfinder.net/de/zug-ICE_220

    Maybe the train is late on the day you want to travel, maybe it is not, you can’t predict that. You can’t predict someone jumping in front of a train or a signal light failing or a passenger thinking it would be a great idea to hold open a door until it breaks.

    And the FlixBus could be stuck in a traffic jam either.

  4. The Track between Frankfurt and Köln is purpose made and usually rather reliable since they don’t share with regional trains and logistics. Of course there’s always a risk with DB but this connection worked well for me in the past

  5. > How often is a German Train Late? I have booked a train called the ICE 220 that is from Frankfurt to Amsterdam.

    Last month nearly 50% of all long distance trains (ICE belongs in this category) were delayed (so more than 5 mins). DB published these stats a few days ago

  6. In the last month, the ICE 220 was punctual to within five minutes on 65% of its trips, and had an average delay of five minutes. The largest delay it had anywhere was 23 minutes (yesterday at Arnhem) and the largest delay it had at Amsterdam was 21 minutes (also yesterday). [Source](https://www.zugfinder.net/de/zug-ICE_220).

  7. this is the train that I take weekly to Koln. It can be 5-10 minutes late (arrival in Koln with ~7 minutes delay), but don’t expect longer delays, unles something happens on the way (a crash, an emergency on the line or something, that happens from my experience very rarely).

  8. On the day of the trip you will be able to see live updates – you might even have set it up to send you push notifications in case of delays, otherwise you can just look at the route on the app.

    This means if an hour earlier the app is already telling you that the train is half an hour late, you could plan to get to the station a few minutes after originally intended. Not the whole half hour though, since I’ve seen trains catch up on some minutes of delay in the Frankfurt – Cologne part.

  9. From Frankfurt to Köln, probably not much (unless some other train gets delayed wrecking the timetable in the process). The rest of the way is a lottery, anywhere from 5 minutes to 2 hours.

  10. As an experience in the summer, travelling from Basel to Dresden. ( I think that was like 12 hours of travel) I recomend you to make sure to have Plan B and plan C just in case.

    I tell you this as a Mexican who became an expert traveling around Germany using trains.

  11. If your train is delayed, just go to information and ask for an updated itinerary.

  12. Trains are only delayed when you book a tight connection, that’s DB‘s law!

  13. I don’t know if you got the flexpreis or sparpreis. I would check, but flexpreis means you could change up which ICE you take if one is delayed. So long as it’s en route to the destination.

  14. This particular line is generally pretty reliable, unless there are congested tracks around Cologne (which depends on the time and day)

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