New maintenance hall in Krefeld officially opened

Today, 29 January 2024, DB opened a new hall for the repair of railway wagons and locomotives at its Krefeld maintenance depot, creating additional capacity at its traditional site to repair damage to trains quickly and professionally. This will get the vehicles back on the rails more quickly and available for the growing number of passengers.

From left to right: Eckart Preen, Head of Economic Affairs of the City of Krefeld; Nicole Friedrich, Chairwoman of the Management Board of DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung; Maintenance Depot Manager Johannes Greving; Dr Thomas Hempe, Head of Provision and Maintenance at DB Fernverkehr.

Four heavy-duty welding stands have been installed in the 2,700 square metre hall, which took around 18 months to complete. Among other things, statically relevant parts of the car bodies, such as entire wall modules, can be replaced there. Preparatory and follow-up work can also be carried out, as well as cutting, grinding and welding work. The new building also includes ancillary workshops in which aluminium and steel components are manufactured and processed.

DB has invested around 12 million euros in the new hall. The new building is the largest sub-project in a wide-ranging expansion of the maintenance depot in Krefeld, which has been in existence for over 130 years: in addition to the new building that has now been completed, two further projects with a combined investment volume of around 6 million euros are planned: In the existing hall, track 30 will be extended to 95 metres and equipped with a working pit, roof working platform, crane system and lifting jack system. And a new surface centre will create grinding and painting capacities for processing glass fibre reinforced plastic components.

Maintenance depot manager Johannes Greving: "DB is investing a total of around 18 million euros in its maintenance depot in Krefeld. Deutsche Bahn is thus making a clear commitment to the traditional railway location and its more than 1,000 jobs. We are proud that we here in North Rhine-Westphalia can make a significant contribution to a strong railway in Germany."

With the investments at the Krefeld site, DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung is following the growth of DB's long-distance transport fleet in particular: the ICE fleet alone is set to grow to 450 trains by the end of the decade. With the expansion of the fleet for a climate-friendly rail transport service, the need for capacity in the maintenance depots is also growing. This is another reason why DB is clearly committed to its long-established DB Fahrzeuginstandhaltung site in Krefeld as a strong and valuable part of the DB maintenance depot network throughout Germany.