Especially:
-Julian the Master of the Alerter (thanks for the webspace and the Photo-tours / lending your digtal camera!)
-my family
-Maarten (for showing some of my trainpics on his page)
-Mark Mervine (for the large amount of his photos!!!)
-Ludovic alias marsupilud for his spectacular TGV photos from France
-Lauritz B., the magnificient LaPoste pics!
-Sönke, for the interesting mail-conversations :-)

... and the persons I maybe forgot to mention.

Finally an extra-greet to the persons who I cannot mention here, without them there would be missing quite a lot on this page - Thanks ! (you know who you are :-)

It was the year 1981, when a technical revolution was put in service: Europe's first High-Speed Train, the TGV-PSE!
Of course in its famous color, orange, this elegance and beauty, a real masterpiece by the designer Jacques Cooper!

Beside its brilliant design, the technology is another reason for being interested in the TGV. Reliable, safe (no big accidents since the beginning of the TGV history!) and letting the TGV speeding around with even over 500km/h... it is the world's most successful high-speed railway technology which made the TGV so famous in France and the rest of the world.

Without that brave decision of the SNCF, constructing a highspeedtrain (with GEC Alsthom, now Alstom) as Europe's first company and taking the risk of a non-profit malinvestation, the existance of ICE and Co. would be more than just doubtful...

Still the only TGV coming to Germany, to Cologne Cental Station, is the Thalys. One should especially take notice of it's beautiful silver-dark red livery when the sun shines:-)
But in 2007, the TGV-Est (POS) will also find its way to Germany, with services from Paris to e.g. Munich und Stuttgart.

And although the newer TGV trains are more 'rounded' than the old, 'edgy' ones, one can get used to it when looking at them 'in real' and the first TGV-PBKA seen in Cologne was also 'love at first sight' ;-)
It's just a pity that the Duplex has so high double-decker passenger wagons, they disturb a bit that typical, elegant TGV sideview profile... and that the SNCF hasn't left even a single TGV-PSE in its orange livery!

The idea for this page was born about the beginning of the Year 2004, to 'share' own trainpics with other people. Furthermore, there was no TGV fanpage in german language known to the webmaster.
This is the webmaster's first page, all logos are selfmade (with photo editors like i.e. IrfanView), the page was created with the help of own HTML-knowledge and editors.

Originally, it was planned to name this page 'www.tgv-thalys.net'

.net instead of .de representing internationality, because most TGV fans rather don't live in Germany and probably prefer the English language, the main reason why a translation was added.
The remark 'Highspeed Fanpage' should indicate, that there's also a bit about another quite well-known highspeedtrain on this page to find, the german ICE, which is also able to run 300 km/h in commercial services since 2001 (ICE 3).

Unfortunately, legal problems with that URL forced a movement of the whole page onto 'www.300km-h.net'. Hopefully,  the main motivation - 300km/h - (mostly preferred on TGV's ;-) as the domain is now legally allowed...

Unfortunately, because of not having an own digital camera, the quality (and also size) of the photos may differ, most photos have been taken with a simple snapshot-camera or with borrowed digital ones and even a professional camera! Thus sorry for the differing quality.

name: Patti
in service since 1986, now based near Cologne

Opinion about the TGV:
My favourite trains are the classic edgy' TGV, and most the TGV-PSE when they were still orange. Unfortunately, this color was replaced by the silver-blue one since 2001 ....

Beside high-speed trains, my other interest are ski(-race-)ing, listening to music (mainly Death- and Black Metal), motocycles (cruisers) skijumping (Adam Małysz) and seeing friends.

Greetings and have fun on my page, get the fascination of elegance and speed! -Patti-