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New German passenger service offered
If the carriage pictured is any indication of what comprises the entire fleet, I have doubts of the company’s success. The cars appear to be lightly renovated retired DB coaches from the 60s or earlier. Most of the cars of that vintage that haven’t been scrapped are used for hauling trainloads of drunken revelers to and from sporting events and beer festivals. The advertisements plastered on the sides of the cars only further cheapen the train’s image.
If private operators want to compete with the Deutsche Bahn, they need to follow NTV’s lead in Italy by running the latest and greatest equipment and providing a better on-time record than the current players.
I would really like to hear more about this, especially since Henry Posner is involved. What’s the business model? With three round trips a day it sounds like they will not be competing on frequency, but price (although I recall that Southwest Airlines started out with 3 round trips a day also). How are they able to offer cheaper service?
HKX is a great opportunity for young travelers, and nostalgic oldsters, to experience scheduled intercity passenger service in traditional rail cars instead of today’s tubular equipment that mimics the reduced freedom and fun of an airplane trip.
Forgive me if I’m two steps behind, but what sort of open access arrangement is in place to let HKX compete with BD using the same infrastructure?
Informations and schedule on: https://www.hkx.de/en/
Are these new “private” passenger ventures in Italy and Germany paying their full fair share of the infrastructure costs?
Are these new “private” passenger ventures in Italy and Germany paying their full fair share of the infrastructure costs?
The carriages are indeed old, but heavily refurbished, and are from the ALEX, ie. Arriva Laenderbahn Express fleet. Some of them are former East German ones, but my own experience is that there’s nothing wrong with them after refurbishment. By the way, the ALEX has a former ARmz-type Rheingold diner as well, used as second (coach) class, still with its original interior - so railfans can get a lot of fun for little bucks.around Munich. 
Does someone knows where to find on the web any information like schedules and fares on this new service?
J-P Deneuville: try hkx.de/en
Deutsch/English site only, it appears.
DB ICE trains will be hard to compete with.
What’s the price/schedule/equipment v DB?? Is there a passenger advantage??