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The German newspaper article names construction and operation of railway stations, and the construction of the infrastructure itself.

My main point is: there seems to be a non-neligible impact, and CO2 calculators don't help me grasp that.

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Is the German newspaper also considering the infrastructural costs of road construction, expansion and maintenance (particularly maintenance costs incurred by shipping freight on those roads instead of rails)?

Forget newspapers. Here's an IRU study about combined rail/road freight transport accounting for costs and emissions.

"There is no such thing as a truly environment friendly means of transport. Combined transport is not inherently superior to pure road transport in terms of environmental impact, as measured by energy consumptionand CO2 emissions."

https://www.iru.org/apps/cms-filesystem-action?file=PPP/en_C...

This “study” is literally from an organisation dedicated to keeping freight transport on roads, it’s hardly unbiased, and is actually of very poor quality - I’d expect to see, for example, an explanation of how the routes involved were chosen for the study. Additionally, if the study said anything other than “road freight is good”, it just wouldn’t have been published by this organisation!

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