
The new
Hamburg-Köln-Express service (hkx) will start at the end of july. hkx itself mentions 23.07.2012 now. We will just wait until the first train runs. Fact is that ES 64 U2-026, -030, -034 are now being used for training, and that they are wearing hkx-adds now. The coaches used for the start-up however are not the ones everyone was expecting. hkx has already invested time and money (
a substantial part of 16 million euro) in retrofitting former OBB-coaches, but they are not available for services yet. The train used for training uses coaches coming from the Alex-services in Southern Germany, resulting in colorful 'mismatch'. For sure these trains don't make the impressions hkx had in mind.