You may remember back when the preservation crew updated Rapid Transit, they added a brand new timetable based on the 2021 timetable, which included more services that tried to make the route a little busier than before. But one thing of particular note was that it would also add Ai ICE services around Bitterfeld, using the ICE 3M from Köln-Aachen. However, at the time when the update came out in May, it didn't appear to be working and so we were left with just the drivable S-Bahn services that came with the new timetable. Now I don't know when this happened, it probably happened during the big core update last month and I'm not entirely sure if you've seen this yet, but when I was playing on Rapid Transit the other day, I discovered that the Ai ICE services seem to be working now. I even took an image of one (even if it's not that great) to prove it. No, what you see here wasn't the result of me modding or playing around in the Scenario Planner, if you have Rapid Transit and considering you all have Köln-Aachen as it is part of the base game, you will all get Ai ICE services that stop at Bitterfeld once an hour in each direction. To run down what these services are, they drive into the route coming from Halle (Saale) where the S8 services come from/go to, they make a stop at Bitterfeld, wait around for a bit and then continue on heading out in the direction of Berlin and the same happens for services going in the other direction. There are 32 of these services in total (16 in each direction), they happen once every hour in each direction and 8 of these services (4 in each direction) are double length units, which means they are 16 coaches long and they happen once every four hours in each direction. Now I know they happen at the same time every hour, but I decided to put together this chart which shows the services in question, what time they arrive and depart Bitterfeld at whether each service is either a single set of a double set service. Now while I am here, I also want to give some feedback regarding these services as they do have a few issues, mainly focusing on services going in the other direction 1. These services come up as IC on the PIS boards even though they are ICE services. They also don't show their service numbers on the PIS boards compared to ICE services on other routes. 2. Southbound services don't use up the entire length of the platform. This is especially a problem for the 16 coach services which end up with nearly half the train stick out over the end of the platform. I managed to get two images of this to show as evidence: But this also goes into the last piece of feedback that I want to give. 3. I personally think that southbound ICE services should use Platform 3 at Bitterfeld instead of Platform 4. Firstly to give use to that platform as it currently doesn't at the moment, but mainly because these services hold up a southbound S2 services that just so happens to come in at the same time as these services and also uses Platform 4 at Bitterfeld. By having the Southbound ICE services use Platform 3, it would allow the S2 service to come into Bitterfeld without being held up and subsequently run behind schedule. But overall, I do like this as it helps increase traffic in a section of the route that wouldn't see so much without and is something that I would definitely like to see more on routes that we currently have and going forward.
