Overview
- From December 26 at 21:00 to January 2 no trains run on the 65‑kilometre corridor as crews clear vegetation, survey the line and check for possible WWII unexploded ordnance.
- Long‑distance services are diverted via Düsseldorf and Duisburg, adding about 20–40 minutes, with no ICE/IC stops in Wuppertal and Solingen and only limited halts in Hagen.
- Regional and S‑Bahn lines including RE4, RE7, RE13, RE49, RB48, S7, S8, S9 and S28 face outages or alterations, with replacement buses and express coach links that lengthen journeys, such as Wuppertal–Cologne taking about 1.5 hours instead of 34 minutes.
- The main closure runs February 6 to July 10, 2026, to renew tracks, switches and bridges, add noise barriers and modernize stations, marking the first use of the bundled Generalsanierung model on a route in North Rhine‑Westphalia.
- DB InfraGo plans record network investment in 2026 of more than €23 billion and forecasts roughly 28,000 construction sites, situating the NRW project within a broader national acceleration of rail renewals.