Far-West Germany

Here's one of the few Dutch-owned ICE3M (for multi-system) trainsets departing Aachen for Frankfurt. You can just see the "Hispeed" logo where usually the "DB" logo would be placed on the nose.

The town of Eschweiler used to be a hotbed of coal mining and other industrial activity in times gone by, but almost nothing remains. What does remain, though, is the last set of manned crossing gates on this line, the operation of which is controlled by the operator in Ehf tower. Here Crossrail 185 578 is seen with the Ewals intermodal train DGS 40162 (Novara/I - Genk/B) passing the tower and swinging around the curve leading up to Eschweiler Hbf train station.

The Thalys high speed train is a variant of the French TGV, running between Cologne and Paris-Nord by way of Brussels. Here one rushes through the large curve at Eschweiler at a pretty good clip. The dome on the second car conceals the satellite uplink for in-train Internet access.