GoAhead based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The majority of its operations are within the United Kingdom, Ireland,
Australia, Singapore, Sweden and Norway. Go-Ahead was formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange prior to being purchased
by Kinetic Group and Globalvia by 2022.
GoAhead Verkehrsgesellschaft Deutschland GmbH was the German rail operation subsidiary of GoAhead. It ran into financial
problems and was aquired by the Austrian federal railways ÖBB. The deal was closed in February 2024. Buying GoAhead's
German rail business was for ÖBB a way to get a major market share of southern Gemany's local and regional train traffic.
This train is a new Stadler FLIRT 3 XL. GoAhead has these both as three coaches long and as five coaches long. This one
ia a five coaches long variant. GoAhead ordered 11 of these as three coaches long and 15 five coaches long variants. There
were serious problems and delays in getting these to service. Now GoAhead uses them
especially in the services between Stuttgart and Nürnberg. Due to the delays GoAhead had to rent temporary trains, originally
intended to be used only until 2020, but which in the summer of 2023 were still replacing these trains.
Picture of a FLIRT 3 XL in the "bwegt" colours of the German Bundesland Baden-Württemberg from Würtzburg 10.7.2023 by
Ilkka Siissalo.