Güterbahnhof Halle: Customers have been waiting for the goods for weeks.
Image: dpa
On the rails, of all things, there is often a standstill in the phase of the 9-euro ticket. Not only travelers suffer from this, but above all freight traffic – and the train drivers. One of them reports.
At the end of a 14-hour shift, around 4 p.m. in the afternoon, it can happen that train driver Stephan G. does not come home as planned because the freight train assigned to him is late or has to be parked on the open line. Then he gets inventive, climbs over the tracks, looks for a ride or, if necessary, gets into a taxi. He often has to become inventive in the course of a normal working day. “There’s always something,” he says.
Sometimes wagons are missing, sometimes the locomotive. Then the phone calls and the waiting begins. Stephan G. estimates that he uses only 30 percent of his working hours for what he was originally trained for, namely driving a train from one station to the next. 70 percent go for “secondary work”, as he puts it, ie telephoning or preparatory measures for trains that are not used after all.
