The operator has not announced when it intends to start as an unnamed investor has withdrawn €1.25 million of funding following the decision by the company's management board to delay services. The company is now seeking a new investor wiling to inject a similar sum and will announce a revised start date when it has found one.

Derschnellzug says continuing uncertainty over the availability of train paths for the Stuttgart to Hamburg and another proposed between Stuttgart and Aachen via Speyer and the Rhine Valley, coupled with problems obtaining restaurant cars equipped with kitchens and baggage vehicles mean that the March start date was not practical.

The Heilbronn based open-access operator derschnellzug.de had originally intended to start operation of three routes from December 2015. Agreement for operation of a new Stuttgart to Hamburg service known as route D1 had been reached in principle with DB Network, and these trains would have been routed via Heilbronn, Würzburg and the old North-South route via Bebra to Hannover and from there via Bremen to Hamburg main station.

Plans to offer a Karlsruhe to Dresden service (route D2) via Heilbronn, Ansbach, Nuremberg and Hof were delayed by the ongoing failure to agree paths on the AVG-owned Heilbronn - Grötzingen - Karlsruhe line.