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ICE Trains
( 'Inter-City-Express' )

ice3 © Patti/www.300km-h.net

In France, the TGV is the pride of the National Railway Company SNCF and in Germany, it is the also very famous high speed train ICE

High speed train services started a lot later in Germany in comparison to France.
In the year 1991, ten years after the first commercial TGV trains, the TGV-PSE, the ICE 1 entered the lines of the DB (German Railways).
It was the great success of the french supertrain which has motivated the German Railways to plan and realize their own high speed train concept.

Unlike the french lines, almost all NBS (new-built high speed tracks) in Germany are also meant to be used by other, fast passenger trains and freight trains (mostly during the night).

The main criteria for fast services is a cab signalisation for the train driver, because it is impossible for him/her to react on common signals at a speed of over 160 km per hour and the braking distances would be too long.
So the counterpart of the french train control system TVM is the german LZB ('Linien-Zug-Beeinflussung', ='Train-Net-Influence') which displays all necessary data concerning signals and speed restrictions on a display in the cab. The transmission runs via two cables in the track (one in the middle and another on the rail's inner side) to an antenna below the powercars of the train.

Concerning exports, the ICE isn't as successful as the TGV:
Four ICE 3 M (-multisystem, class 406) are a property of the Dutch Railways NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) and 16 'Velaro E' based on the ICE 3 will do services for the spanish railway compamy RENFE ('AVE', Alta Velocidad España, ='High-Speed Spain') from 2006 on.

-click onto the names to choose-
(state of all data: May 2005)

1991:	ICE 1 (class 401, DB)	- Germany's first high-speed train
1996:	ICE 2 (class 402, DB)	- the fellow of the ICE 1
2000:	ICE 3 (M) (class 403/406, DB & NS)	- the first 300 km/h-passenger train of the DB and its 'star'
1999 & 2000:	ICE-T & TD (class 411, 415 & 605, DB)	- the tilting ICEs
1985 & 1998:	ICE-V ( ICExperimental ) & ICE-S (class 410, DB)	- the ICE prototype and its newer fellow, a test- and measurement train

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