The regional train to Ulm leaves Merklingen station. On the left the bus station, the bicycle parking garage and the park-and-ride car park, on the right the A 8 motorway.
Image: Saskia Stoehr
Merklingen on the Swabian Alb has had a train station since December – directly on a new ICE line. Does that bring the upswing to the village? We took a look.
Bahnhof Merklingen on the Swabian Alb, a normal working day, 11:39 a.m. The regional train from Ulm spits out almost 20 passengers, including three women with shopping bags. “We were just shopping in Ulm. It’s only ten minutes from here by train, we used to have to drive half an hour to get there by car,” says one woman. In the afternoon it gets much more crowded on the platform. Above all, young vocational students who do their training in the big city get out before the commuters come home afterwards.
These are the first impressions of a curiosity that only exists twice in Germany: a regional train station for a few villages on an ICE high-speed line, where there has been no rail connection for decades. The small station has been in operation since December – together with the first part of the new high-speed route from Ulm to Stuttgart. On a route that is supposed to connect big cities with each other: In advertising brochures for the railways, it is even part of the main line from Paris to Budapest.
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