The Mannheim to Saarbrücken railway is a 130km (81 mile) mainline through the German States of Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland Palatinate and the Saarland and serves as an important international corridor connecting the Rhine-Main area to France. The route out of the box would cover RE and Rhine Neckar S-Bahn services, but with other addons can include IC, TGV and an extended ICE timetable. A new locomotive for this route could continue the recent trend of older German rolling stock, although the route itself would be set in the mid 2010s. The Route Itself The route itself heads over onto the west bank of the Rhine from Mannheim where it leads to Ludwigshafen, where a major inland port is located on the Rhine, before continuting on to Schifferstadt (here the S2 and S3 lines divert from the mainline), Neustadt, Hochspeyer, Kaiserslauten, Homburg (The western terminus of the Rhein-Neckar S1 line), Rohrback and Saarbrucken. The Konrad Adenauer railway bridges in Mannheim Neustadt train station Lambrecht railway station Heiligenberg tunnel's West portal Homburg Railway station Mannheim Central Station Saarbrucken HBF The Headline Locomotive DB BR 151 Originally built for the West German Railways, these locomotives continue to haul freight for private companies across Germany. Though there are only a couple of dozen left. They weight 118 tonnes and have a top speed of 120kph. 170 examples were built. This would also include the standard German assortment of freight wagons Other rolling stock DB BR 425 These EMUs have been serving S-Bahn and Regio lines for 25 years. On this route they would serve in the RE60 services, as well as introduced with a new Rhein-Neckar S-Bahn livery DB BR 406 Although there is no high speed running on this route, with the average speed on the route being around 100kph with a maximum of 160kph, 2 ICE lines travel on this railway, ICE line 15 from Saarbrucken towards Frankfurt, and then Berlin. and ICE line 82 which runs from Frankfurt to Mannheim and then onto Paris Gare de l'Est. Layering This route like most German routes is fairly standard for layering, for adding doppelstock coaches and locomotive hauled services, as well as locomotive substitutions, so I'll only mention the ones of interest Player Controlled DB BR 101 Owners of this, whether the original version, or the upcoming TSG version can run Intercity services to and from Saarbrucken. OBB 1116 Some Intercity services are run using Austrian rolling stock, I have seen before also on the Left Rhine Railway near Remagen an OBB Taurus hauling freight, so it can substitute into freight services TGV Duplex DB and SNCF run both the ICE 3 and the TGV Duplex from Paris to Frankfurt on line 82 DB BR 401 These 1st generation ICEs also run on Line 15 Non Playable Layers DB BR 628 These DMUs operate on the Nordbahn from Neustadt to Monsheim, these would also be spotted at Saarbrucken and Mannheim Opportunties for Future Rolling Stock DLCs DB BR 426 A shortened version of the BR 425, these 2 car EMUs operate on some RE and RB services along the line ICE T An ICE that can tilt, these come in 2 classes, 7 car BR415s and 5 car 411s, these operate on the ICE Line 15
