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What about upgrading existing track to run the German ICE http://www.bahn.de/p/view/international/englisch/trains/trains_ice.shtml (or ICE-T http://www.bahn.de/p/view/international/englisch/trains/trains_icet.shtml) trains? They are fast trains (similar to France's TGV), but not enough high-speed track in Germany to make best use of the train. Surely this would be cheaper?

What about upgrading existing track to run the German ICE http://www.bahn.de/p/view/international/englisch/trains/trains_ice.shtml (or ICE-T http://www.bahn.de/p/view/international/englisch/trains/trains_icet.shtml) trains? They are fast trains (similar to France's TGV), but not enough high-speed track in Germany to make best use of the train. Surely this would be cheaper?

not really. It might be true when trying to book online but I had no problems booking a ticket for the a german ICE to Cologne and a connection with the Thalys to Brussels at the train station ticket counter here in Hannover.

Just for the record, you can easily get a train schedule information via cell phone in Germany, too: http://mobile.bahn.de/bin/mobil/detect.exe

This site does it for all of Germany, and some/most of Europe. The underlying HAFAS software is pretty powerful and has been in development since the 80s. That said, I like the Google interface better.

Not to mention DeutscheBahn in Germany or one of many in Japan(you can even get it on your cell phone there), and that is just the countries I have lived in. I'm a 25 year old USian and the one thing that I really like about Germany and Japan has been that both have very extensive public transport systems(though were I live in Germany is a bit lacking, the closes train station is 16ks away, but I also live in cow country)....

Honestly, I think a lot of the problems with health stem from American's overreliance on cars. Seriously, look at Germany and Japan, the people tend to weigh a lot less and live a lot longer even though the German diet is full of fat and the Japanese has tons of sodium. However, both of those places tend to have their cities designed such that you can't park right next to your destination wherever you go. I seriously think that all that walking has significant health benefits.

Nokia has still activity left in Nokia, which is a suburb of Bochum (Germany). Feel free to use an Online Train Schedule for directions to Bochum-Nokia.

Now, the price for a one way trip from Regensburg to Bad Hersfeld on the ICE with two stops taking 3 hours and one minute is 59 euros. With German gasoline prices running around 1.20 euro per liter that would purchase around 49 liters of gasoline. Unless your car is a total piece of shit you can drive from Bad Hersfeld to Regensburg in a little over two hours (my best record was 1:55 minutes) and you won't burn more than 40 litres of gasoline doing it, making the trip cost 48 euros. As soon as you throw in some kids or a friend it becomes cheaper to drive. Note also that that three hour travel time assumes that you're taking an ICE train (Inter City Express) get on a Regional train or, God forbid, the Schnellzug (which is German for "fast train" and in a twisted little bit of teutonic irony describes the milk run that makes every single stop along the line) that trip can take up to seven hours.

I asked the Germans I worked with how they travelled on vacations and most of them either drove for short distances within the country or flew for longer distances because it was quicker and cheaper.

This isn't to say that we couldn't do trains here. Our transportation system is so riddled with subsidies, both hidden and direct and hobbled with anti-competitive behaviors (railroad labor rules, monopolistic domination of hub airports by large carriers) that it is hard to figure out how much things really costs, which unfortunately ends up giving the short shrift to rail transit.

What exactly do you mean with fast enough ?

I know this was a joke, nevertheless I was curious what the time really is at the moment. From Edinburg to Algeciras it takes you about 37:30 hours, Algeciras being the city where the ferry boats to Tanger leave. So you have to add the time for the boat trip. ;) (Check here).

This of course doesn't take into account the (un)reliability of the various rail networks you have to cross... ;)

London - Moscow is pretty easy these days. Just grab a EuroStar from London Waterloo to Brussels and tranfer there to a train to Cologne, change again in Brest and you're off to Moscow. London - Moscow in less than 40 hours. You can book right away.

The URL gives a place to fill in your options, press 'Verbindung Suchen" to get the data.
Those dynamically created pages suck when hyperlinking :-|
Or try your favorite airline and find a direct flight.

Or you simply take the ICE train (makes 300km/h, too but is a lot more comfortable) built buy the same company as the maglev from cologne to frankfurt (www.bahn.de).

I want to know where there's a link on any page at bahn.de that indirectly gets to Radikal A cursory examination shows that virtually every link on their site points to other links within the bahn.de domain. I'm sure someone with sufficiently Mad Skillz could whip up a bot to map out the link structure, and find the shortest number of links to follow to get there, with a description that even a dumbass judge can follow

In the newest high-speed (ICE) trains of Deutsche Bahn there are both no-mobile-phone-use carriages (enforcement not by jammers but by fellow passengers) and carriages with repeaters for mobile phone signals.

To have repeaters is a good idea IMO as this allows the mobile phones to reduce their transmitting power.

BTW I wonder if the Japanese trains also have metal vapour coated windows. It used to be difficult to get a mobile connection from an ICE train. If I recollect correctly Deutsche Bahn at first replaced the windows on some cars, before they went for repeaters.