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Maybe we need an ICE-Express (I know what ICE stands for). An ICE shouldn't have to stop in every city, that's what ICs and and regional rail is for. It gets ridiculous on lines through the Rhine-Ruhr area, all very large cities that on their own merit an ICE stop, but they're spaced five minutes apart. There is definitely a need for real high speed rail, Hamburg to Munich in less than 3h should be possible, it takes around 6-7h now.

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Something like that already exists and is called "ICE Sprinter".

Unfortunately there is no English Wikipedia page about it, but here is the German one: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE_Sprinter

That‘s the idea of the „ICE Sprinter“, but I imagine it’s even more difficult to integrate into the timetable because of the shared tracks.

Yeah, if I'm not mistaken a lot of the tracks for the french TGV and also the japanese Shinkansen (literally means new main line) are separated from the tracks for slower trains like cargo and regional. But whenever I see the protests of people when there are plans for new tracks I start doubting that I'll ever see a fully separated high speed rail network.

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