Evening all!

Weather turned out to be, well, perhaps not great, but fair enough for me to head out and have a look at the two new light rail lines in Frankfurt which were put in service today. These would be the U8 and U9 lines – both lines being served by the Heddernheim depot and thus belonging to the so-called "A" route operationally. U8 provides a connection from the southern terminus of the "A" route at Southern Station to the new borough of Riedberg in the northwest of the city, while U9 is the first tangential line in the network, avoiding the trunk section of the "A" route altogether and running between the northwestern boroughs of Ginnheim and Nieder-Eschbach via Riedberg. For the sake of simplicity, I'll just refer you to this network plan by the regional public transport authority, RMV: Click.

Regular readers on here might remember my two-part feature about an excursion through the light rail network which I'd been on in March this year and where I also outlined a bit of the light rail network's history: Click and click.

However, before I headed up to Riedberg I first snapped one of the new trains on the regional railway line from Frankfurt to Siegen, the franchise of which has been won by private operator Hessische Landesbahn (HLB), and which took over operations on this line today...

Much as is the case with VIAS on the Frankfurt-Koblenz line via Wiesbaden and along the East Rhine Railway, HLB chose to procure Stadler FLIRT type EMUs for this line. Six of these are five-segment class 429 sets, which are augmented by three three-segment class 427 sets. This here was a double unit of 429 042 and 046, working the HLB24962 service to Gießen and Siegen. The unit seen in this image is 429 042, which was to work only the section to Gießen, where the train would be split – only the second unit then working the remainder of the line to Siegen.

After this, I made my way for the new light rail lines...

I first caught a U3 service, headed for Oberursel Hohemark, and got off at Niederursel, immediately before the junction where the Riedberg line branches off. Just a few minutes later, I then snapped an U8 service – 08-05, to be exact, as indicated by the formation number in the lower right corner of the windscreen. The German term for this actually is "Kursnummer", which I assume could also be translated plainly as "course number", but of which I am not completely sure whether this quite captures the gist of the term. Thís was a set of three U5 type LRVs built by Bombardier, headed by car 647.

Having ridden up to Riedberg on the following U9 service, I then captured the same set from the previous photo after emerging from the turnback area further down the line beyond the platforms of the Riedberg stop – this turnback being used only for the U8 line which terminates at the Riedberg stop. There still is much construction work going on in this borough, but the light rail line is fully operational. There actually are two stops up here – University Campus Riedberg and Riedberg, the former being a few hundred metres behind where I was standing here. The Riedberg Campus is where the natural science departments of Frankfurt University are located.

Walking back towards University Campus, I then captured another U8 service headed by U5 type car 640, trundling along the rail line in the centre of Riedbergallee. I can imagine this line to be looking nice in the warm months of the year, what with the inlaid grass on the roadbed and the greenery along both sides!

And see: Then a heavenly light shone upon me and this U9 service coming in from Nieder-Eschbach and heading to Ginnheim, consisting of U4 type LRVs and headed by car 526 .

The University Campus stop was now immediately behind me when I snapped this U8 service, headed by car 627.

I then headed back to Niederursel and successfully attempted to capture a train turning right at the Niederursel junction to Riedberg – this being an U9 service headed by car 506.

There is a small back road tracing the outline of the line after the Niederursel junction, which I walked up. And what's more: I was lucky to be able to capture a refurbished U4 type LRV working the U9 line. Two cars – 529, which is the one leading this service, and 510 – have been given this refurbishment package already, which consists of a redesigned interior closely resembling that of the U5 type, as well as air conditioning units for the cabs, which are hidden behind the aerodynamic shroud right above the windscreen.

And finally a couple of interesting miscellanies from further down the "A" route – at the Lindenbaum stop, to be exact...

The "A" route is frequently being discussed due to the fact that there have been numerous accidents of the "one under" kind, to adopt the London Underground jargon – most of these having been attributable to both lack of caution and impatience by pedestrians. Various measures are being discussed to reduce the risk of "passenger action", one of these being seen here – flashing "level crossing" warning signs in the ground which are triggered by approaching trains...

...and augmented by coloured road coating with "train" pictograms.

So, that would be it for today – hope you enjoyed reading!