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At the insistence of the German Federal Department for Re-search and Technology and the Department of Transportation the German Federal Railway (later German Rail) - for quite a long time together with various other companies - supervised between 1982 and 2008 the development and the testing of the German magnetic levitation system. For this purpose the "Versuchs- und Planungsgesellschaft fur Magnetbahnsysteme" (MVP) was created. The mission contained operations of the test facilities at the Emsland, proving and evaluab'on of the various test rides, studies for fields of application for the sys-tem in Germany or other countries, and preparatory work for a national implementation of the system. The paper presents an historical overview of the activities of this company in the area of conflict between the priorities of Federal Departments, industry and the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recently made decision to order the new ICx trains with an axle load of nearly 18 tons is being discussed in this article. Further the coherence of this decision with the two current projects Stuttgart 21 and the new line Wendlingen-Ulm will be explained. Finally it will be discussed how the until now realized and currently being built infrastructure projects for High Speed Rail may be practically used, if the high speed network is completed for this purpose. At the end a proposal will be made how to work out a target for High Speed Network in Germany [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the efforts by the Deutsche Bahn (DB) and the Société nationale des chemins de fer français (SNCF) to connect French and German cities by high speed trains. The German InterCity Express and the French Train à Grand Vitesse will connect Frankfurt, Mannheim and Kaiserslautern, among others to Paris, and Stuttgart and Karlsruhe to Strasbourg.