Afternoon all!

As we were having fairly nice weather this afternoon, I decided to shoot a few photos on a specific stretch of railway in the western boroughs of Frankfurt which due to current events is once again proving to be very useful to have available!

In recent weeks, three derelict WWII bombs have been found on a construction site near the borough of Rödelheim, which I understand had been part of what has once been an airfield – and, in fact, the earliest forerunner to today's Frankfurt Airport, which but is located several miles further to the south. Due to a "Skyscraper Festival" taking place over the weekend, it had been decided to wait till this afternoon to recover and defuse this third bomb to have been found thus far.

To allow for a safe recovery, a large area around the Rebstock fields and the western part of the city centre was designated as a two-part safety zone – whose centre needed to be evacuated completely, while the ring surrounding this area was put under a temporary curfew.

As the outer ring also just covered the railway line from Rödelheim Station to Western Station, this line needed to be closed for the duration of the bomb recovery. Consequently, the S3 and S4 suburban lines are currently being re-routed through a small bypass which is usually referred to by the name of the junction it is tied into. That name is "Abzweig Mainzer Landstraße", and abbreviated "FMLA" in German railspeak. Usually, it is only used by weekday peak hour workings on the RB 15 line from Frankfurt to Brandoberndorf, which is operated by Hessische Landesbahn. As this bypass is electrified, it has often been used for re-routings such as those required today.

For those of you unfamiliar with the area, I have taken this screenshot in Google Earth and outlined the regular route through Galluswarte, Messe (Trade Fair Centre) and Western Station with green dots, and the Mainzer Landstraße bypass with red dots:

As the motorway into Frankfurt had been closed of as well, I was presented with this sight when I arrived at my first photo spot on the street and railway overpass near the petrol station which you can see near the junction of the regular and the bypass lines in the upper left part of the map. This was just outside the curfew perimeter, and I could see several policemen guarding the closed-off motorway entrances:

And it is a rare sight indeed to see a German autobahn devoid of any traffic on a weekday! The cars you can see entering it on the outbound lane appear to have found their usual route blocked.

I first captured the slightly delayed S 35349 down service on the S3 line to Darmstadt, headed by 423 375. The car to the right isn't mine!

Police helicopters were circling overhead as I walked back to the Nidda bridge a few hundred yards northwest of where I was just standing.

423 373 was then heading the S 35450 service to Kronberg and is seen here leaving the bypass just ahead of the Nidda bridge. Trains coming from the Mainzer Landstraße bypass run on the wrong track till just beyond the bridge:

...with 423 407 forming the other half of the double unit.

The next down service was headed by 423 332 on the S 35351 service to Darmstadt. As parts of the Mainzer Landstraße bypass are single-tracked, delays cannot be entirely avoided, especially when you also consider the usual lot of passengers who seem to blunder around completely oblivious to all passenger information telling them that these lines aren't working their usual route today.

And a pursuit shot of 423 402 at the rear of the same working as it enters the bypass.

Thanks for looking!