Hi guys. I have booked an ICE ticket from Bremen to Munich and need to select a seat.
Is there a way to find out which direction does the train travel? Are the 1st class coaches at the front or rear of the train? I want a seat facing the direction of the train.
Thanks!
https://i.redd.it/zcx316rfu0rg1.png
Posted by aquila399
34 Comments
Far right
You cannot actually be sure. Depending if it has to pick up another train due to delays or gets turned around for other reasons. if a train starts at a destination generally first class is put as close as possible to the platform entry (ie first class is generally at the back).
Its not possible to tell. Partialy because it can change during the Journey depending on if there are Kopfbahnhöfe on it or not.
Usually the 1st class wagons are on the front of the train. But you can’t really trust this for all the travel. For example, Bremen->Munich might stop at Frankfurt which is a station where trains reverse direction (they go in, go out in the opposite direction)
The first class coaches are the ones marked in dark grey.
The orange man would say: “The direction where you come from.”
I just looked for a similar connection in DB navigator, the first class is at the front when leaving Bremen. But it will probably reverse direction in Stuttgart (if your journey also stops there).
You will see the map and the numbers in the platform at the moments prior the arrival, but even in that situation you cannot trust it, so probably is best to just hop on and walk a bit inside the nice train.
That depends completely on the itinerary that the train is taking.
Is this the direct ICE through Cologne and Frankfurt Flughafen? Then it will change direction in both Cologne and Stuttgart, so it will run in one direction for the first three hours, then in the other direction for two more hours, and then in the first one again for the last two hours.
If you take another itinerary, YMMV.
It can and will change during any given trip.
In such case I book 2 seats opposite of each other.
But the train could change direction on its way to Munich and after 15 minutes your 2nd paid reservation is no more valid as you only have on ticket
It travels both ways.
https://www.bahn.de/service/zug/fahrtinformationen
This is in German, but it tells you where to find this kind of information within the Navigator app. However, as others have already mentioned, it is not always adhered to, and the driving direction will change during the trip, e.g. in Frankfurt.
If the ICE stops in Frankfurt HBF then towards that Station the first class coaches are in the front so they have the shortest way through the station in Frankfurt.
But Frankfurt is also a Terminus which means the train changes direction, that’s probably also the reason why your train doesn’t show a direction for the journey because it changes halfway through.
Not really. Also, ICEs can change direction somewhere en route. Mine always does. (Düsseldorf to Bavaria).
If you want a seat facing the direction of the train, don’t reserve.
With the help of [https://www.fernbahn.de/datenbank/suche](https://www.fernbahn.de/datenbank/suche) it is possible to determine the direction, but a) it’s a brainfuck, b) it can change from the start and c) it can change during travelling (although changes in direction should be displayed at fernbahn.de).
It’s shown in the **Wagenreihung** at best. Go to [Bahn.de](http://Bahn.de), look for your train, open up the [“Details”-Tab and klick on “Fahrtinformationen”](https://i.imgur.com/W646c7V.png), then Switch from “Fahrtverlauf” to [“Wagenreihung”](https://i.imgur.com/8zEh10O.png). There you can see in which section each Wagon stops and – at best – in which direction it drives.
Most people don’t know this, as you see in this thread. Even most of the Bahn-Service-Employees. But this information isn’t available to all trains. As soon as something changes against the planned train composition this menu will be incomplete or even disable due to changes on the time/train table.
You can technically look up the „Wagenreihung“ for each departure station. Easily googleable. As others mentioned if there is a „Kopfbahnhof“ it will change during the trip. Usually 1. class goes first and at the destination the train is supposed to be turned around. However due to various construction sites and delays and no staff there is around a 50/50 chance the direction is actually correctly indicated in my experience.
In the navigator App, you click on the connection you chose. There, you click on the train in question (here ICE 108):
[https://ibb.co/DfS4wCjg](https://ibb.co/DfS4wCjg)
Next, you tab “Wagenreihung”. There, you see a scheme of the train with a little arrow that says “Fahrtrichtung”:
https://ibb.co/sJcqRDk2
Look up the train number on [VagonWEB](https://www.vagonweb.cz/razeni/razeni.php?zeme=DB&kategorie=ICE&rok=2026), there’s an arrow that shows the direction of travel
Impossible to tell
As ICEs to Munich will at least turn around planned in Frankfurt am Main Hbf which by design has the direction of travel changed (Frankfurt am Main is a Kopfbahnhof).
Up and to the left… up and to the left
Impossible to tell, especially because changing direction during traveling is a common occurrence
Funny, the real answer is “not going anywhere.”
Both ways. On most journeys you change direction at least once.
It is like Schrödinger’s train: until you board it, it is going both ways.
First class is usually in the front. Like in the picture the train drives from left to right. But as others say, it can change direction but that’s not very likely
You nicht get a direction on https://bahn.expert. But as others have stated, reality may turn out differently.
You can check at fernbahn.de
A lot of times it does not move at all.
Not from that, but there are other sources. Which train is it (train number, date)?
Mostly forwards
If you look up your connection on the DB app and click on the train number, e.g. ICE619, you get tabs “journey” and “coach sequence”. Under “coach sequence” you can also see the direction of the train.
The scheduled directions of the trains used to get published directly by Deutsche BAhn. But they’ve stopped publishing them ahead of time, because they had to change them last minute so often.
Now, since you can only look up the (actual) direction of travel shortly before departure, you can no longer complain about the train being the wrong way round, making you walk the length of the platform to get from where you’ve been waiting in the scheduled position of “your” car to where “your” car actually came to be.
That said, go to [grahnert.de](http://grahnert.de), click the number range your train is in, scroll down to your train’s number, and you can see the scheduled direction (the second column shows arrows for each part of the route between stations where the train changes direction; these arrows apply to the sequence of cars shown in the third column) — with no guarantee of the actual duration matching it. You can even switch to English at the top right.