Doing an all stopper service from Koblenz to Mainz in the 110 and every time I arrive at Bingerbruck, I have to wait for a freight train to pass that makes me several minutes late into my next station. Is this just some kind of pathing error or would freight take priority over passenger?
Real life dispatcher here: It is plausible, yeah. We would do that sometimes if the cargo train and the regional share the same route for a while. In that case you'd "sacrifice" the passenger service so the freight train can run straight through and doesn't have to accelerate/decelerate all the time -> economic reasons. But in the end its up to the dispatcher and its kind of a personal preference (at least in the scope of whats allowed in our operational guidelines) EDIT: there are also certain (but extremely rare cases) of freight trains that have the highest route priority there is. These freight trains actually have priority over ICEs and in that case as a dispatcher you'd actually need to stop a ICE to let a freight train pass. Figure that lol. These trains are most likely urgent freight trains that deliver coal to powerplants or stuff like that. But until now I never had one where I work yet.
Yeah, but please don't take me by my word Usually passenger traffic has the higher priority. But I could see it happening in real life, that you would get the freight going first. Done that a few times myself too. But usually only if you don't really stop the passenger service more than a minute or two. In your case, 10 minutes is a little extreme.
For example container trains between the large Metrans terminal in Prague and Hamburg harbor run as freight international express category, and they have equal priority to fast/express passenger trains. The reason is purely pragmatic, if they miss their ship, it will be extremely expensive to rebook the containers, and will cause additional chaos in the harbor.
I remember these container trains getting routed via the wrong-way track to pass a passenger train on my home route. Since the passenger train stops every 2-3 km, the freight would clear it by the time it reached the next major station.
