High Speed Service Providers
Take a quick look at the companies running the super high speed and high speed traffic. Outside the traditional national companies there are already a handful of companies which are competing, although the new companies most often are also owned by the same giants.


   Look at the High Speed Services... 

Velaro / ICE3
The Velaro / ICE family of Siemens AG is the best seller for today's super high speed trains. Half of the population of the Central European nations can travel in these trains today. New Velaro EMUs have now been taken into use around the world too, even in China and Russia.

In the picture is the newest member of the large fleet of Velaro trains, the class 407 of the Deutsche Bahn. This class of trains are currently in the testing phase and every nuance is being perfected before their use in the international fleet of the DB. Destinations will be between France, Belgium and the German larger cities, where the trains will compete with airlines. In 2015 super high speed dash to London from Germany will be added. The news are now telling that the Velaro-D will be used for Köln - Brüssel route first as well as additional capacity to Paris once the certifications runs are done.

The ICE / Velaro comes in every form from super high speed units to tilting and even diesel units! they are used from hot climates of Spain to extreme coldness in Russian Siberia.

  More on Velaro and ICE Super High Speed Trains Page...

ICx
The early high speed train designs like ICE1 or the TGV-PSE were state of the art 30 years ago. But since the fast development in the area has led to significant improvements and now there is a road map for the TGV-PSE, ICE1 and ICE2 for retirement.

As usual the well working system has also meant the need for increased capacity and a creation of a new sub high speed class. The first ICx trains will be built by Siemens for this capacity need and the later units for the replacement of the ICE1 and ICE2 units. While not quite as fast as the ICE1/2, the operator DB has found out that most of the time the very top speed is not used even today. And for the higher speeds the Deutsche Bahn can always offer their Velaros / ICE3's.

What once was rare, has now become very common feature of the semi high speed and high speed trains: tilting to increase speed on the traditional railroad lines.

The tilting trains are often introduced on lines, when the money can not be raised in the short term for any larger building project and there obviously is demand for a faster than normal travelling. Example of this approach can be found on tracks Northwest of London, UK. The positive results often, as in this case too, are that the numbers of people travelling will steadily raise. With the increasing numbers a true high speed line with super high speed EMUs can be judged sooner or later.

The approach above will go around the bottleneck found in California: trying to build a super high speed system all at once is a formidable obstacle with scarce money and nonexistent customer pool. If they just would take one step at the time, slowly building the customer base that takes decades to form anyway, no matter what type of line is in use... you have to consider that the Germans took a whole 200 years to perfect their system! One step at the time. Today, Germany is one of the leading industrial nations with Velaro super high speed trains crossing the country on high speed networks.

   On left above a Swedish Västtrafik Bombardier manufactured X52-2 is providing for the regional service of Jönköping, Sweden. This unit tilts to run curvous track faster than a normal train would. Picture by Ilkka Siissalo.

  On left the SBB ICN unit is taking a serious tilt to make the travelling more comfortable for those aboard it. ICNs provide much of the semi high speed traffic inside Switzerland. Picture by Nick Slocombe.

600 series Pendolinos

Deutsche Bahn of Germany
Deutsche Bahn branded its high speed services as ICE, Inter City Express, in the 1990s. This has remained so until now and numerous trains like the one on the left have these famous three letters painted on them. The ICE concept has been a real success story, both at home in Germany and in the neighboring countries, some of which are daily served by the DB. The ICE is also used by the DB cooperation companies like NS in Netherlands and Belgian railways, which own some of the ICE3 class 406 trains. DB's high speed operations rely much on the ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 and Velaro trains, the newest addition being the class 407 Velaro of Siemens added to the family to increase the capacity.

Railjet of Austria
In the late 1990s ÖBB, the Austrian Railways, saw huge markets opening to its immediate neighborhood. It decided to invest into new rolling stock and create as effective fleet as possible. This meant in many cases using as few types of rolling stock as possible.

ÖBB ordered large quantities of true multiuse Taurus (ES64U2) locomotives and for the use in passenger rail matching coach sets with driving trailers. Coupled semi permanently with the Taurus locomotive they together form virtual EMUs with top speed of 230 km/h! What an ingenious invention of Siemens and ÖBB!

Although the market did not become reality and the sets have had slow start, the passenger numbers are slowly growing and Railjets are used today in high speed traffic to neighboring countries, not just within their home turf Austria.

Southeastern of U.K.
The Southeastern runs class 395 EMUs east of London along the HS1 (British High Speed 1) line and the nearby towns.

Here the unit is seen during the trial traffic at St Pancras station in London, U.K. Picture by John McKey.

SNCF, the French State Railways
Societe Nationale...