Dear Minister Schnieder, On behalf of the signatories to this letter – representing rail freight and combined transport industries from Austria, Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and Slovakia as well as European associations – we extend our sincere congratulations on your appointment as Germany’s Federal Minister for Transport. This letter marks the first joint appeal from a broad coalition of international rail freight stakeholders. With half of European rail freight crossing national borders – and Germany being the crucial centrepiece of European logistics – the performance of your railway infrastructure is critical to our collective success. This affects military mobility, industrial productivity, and the economic viability of climate friendly transport. However, the performance of DB InfraGO AG – the primary infrastructure manager – is failing to provide sufficient quality, reliability, and customer-oriented information that is standard in many European countries. In consequence, rail freight operations on the German network become increasingly complex and costly with a lot of uncertainty for customers. (....)