30 Years Inter City Express Network — The Inspiring Story Of Its Maybach Powered Ancestors

An ICE 3 of Deutsche Bahn AG on the Ingol­stadt-Munich line near Fahlen­bach. Pho­to­graph: Sebas­t­ian Ter­floth, CC BY-SA 2.5

This month we are cel­e­brat­ing the 30^th anniver­sary of the Inter City Express (‚ICE‘) Trains in Ger­many. The con­cept of these trains was to be able to trav­el between Ger­man cities includ­ing con­nec­tions to neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, as con­ve­nient­ly and swift­ly as pos­si­ble — „Dop­pelt so schnell wie das Auto, halb so schnell wie das Flugzeug“ twice as fast as a car, half the speed of air trav­el, as an adver­tise­ment slo­gan of these days apt­ly framed it. The tech­nol­o­gy the trains were using def­i­nite­ly was new and inno­v­a­tive, the con­cept of a train net­work like that how­ev­er had been con­cep­tu­al­ized, and for some time even real­ized a lot ear­li­er- and much of it could not have hap­pened with­out the propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy by May­bach Motor Works.

Fre­quen­cy and max­i­mum per­mit­ted speed on the Ger­man ICE net­work (as of Decem­ber 2017). Image by ‚Clas­si­cal geo­g­ra­ph­er‘, CC BY-SA 4.0

On June 2^nd of 1991, the ICE trains were offi­cial­ly deployed for trav­el by the DB (Deutsche Bahn, Ger­man Fed­er­al Rail­way). It became the start­ing point for a suc­cess sto­ry: Until 2021 over 1,5 bil­lion guests were trav­el­ing with the ICEs since their orig­i­nal launch.

How­ev­er, the results from three decades ago had not been pos­si­ble with­out anoth­er par­a­digm shift anoth­er 50 years ear­li­er — the SVT or ‚Schnell­trieb­wa­gen mit Ver­bren­nungsmo­tor‘ fast trains with com­bus­tion engine, that had not been pos­si­ble with­out the con­tri­bu­tions of May­bach-Motoren­bau GmbH in con­junc­tion with oth­er lead­ing com­pa­nies of the time.

Net­work of high-speed rail­cars in the time until 1939. © Deutsche Bahn Stiftung

The 1930s saw an enor­mous infra­struc­ture project come to fruition. Its plans had been devel­oped dur­ing the Weimar Repub­lic. The aim was to install a rail net­work with which the cap­i­tal (Berlin) could be reached from the entire state ter­ri­to­ry with­in just one day. For this pur­pose, more than 30 cities in the Ger­man state and bor­der regions were con­nect­ed to a net­work for high-speed rail­cars, all pow­ered by May­bach engines — except for a minor sec­tion from Berlin to Dres­den that used stream­lined steam engine locomotives.

The SVT 137 856 Mod­el Cologne at the Har­bor Sta­tion in Friedrichshafen, 2011. © Man­fred Blumeier

Pre­vi­ous­ly seem­ing­ly utopi­an max­i­mum speeds of 160 km/​h had now become pos­si­ble with the fast-run­ning diesel engines that May­bach Motor Works pro­vid­ed and the aver­age cruis­ing speed on most sec­tions was 120 km/​h. The speed at which the rail­cars could be dri­ven was also high­er: One SVT Mod­el Leipzig even reached 205 km/​h on a test dri­ve. A traf­fic sys­tem of this rank exist­ed only in Ger­many; oth­er coun­tries only real­ized par­tial sec­tions. The impacts of this inno­va­tion had an Europe-wide dimen­sion. and accord­ing­ly fast rail­cars with Diesel engines were soon used in Bel­gium, Hol­land, Spain, and France. The propul­sions of the May­bach Motor Works had become an export hit.

It goes with­out say­ing that Nation­al Social­ist pro­pa­gan­da instru­men­tal­ized the high-speed rail­car net­work for its own pur­pos­es. 1935 offered a high­ly sym­bol­ic oppor­tu­ni­ty for this, as this year marked the 100^th anniver­sary of the Adler’s (‚Eagle’s‘) jour­ney from Nurem­berg to Fürth — the begin­ning of rail traf­fic in Ger­many. The fact that the idea for the rail net­work orig­i­nat­ed in demo­c­ra­t­ic times was con­cealed at the cel­e­bra­tions. In 1938, the rail net­work of express rail­cars had a de fac­to size that it only reached again decades lat­er. The out­break of the war in 1939 brought an abrupt end to all fur­ther expan­sion plans. From now on the fuel for the express rail­cars was used exclu­sive­ly for war purposes.

After WWII May­bach Motor Works in Friedrichshafen con­tin­ue to cater to the needs of rail­way com­pa­nies with their devel­op­ments. Using knowl­edge gained from engines for track dri­ven vehi­cles such as tanks, a new mod­el of engines was devel­oped — the MD series. M is short for May­bach and D is for Diesel/​It was this gen­er­a­tion of engines that was used for trains that bought the con­cept of an effec­tive high speed rail net­work even fur­ther. Start­ing out in June 1957 after a Dutch ini­tia­tive, the so-called TEE (Trans-Europe-Express) trains were con­nect­ing many of Europe’s pros­per­ing cities, the dif­fer­ent coun­tries how­ev­er still rely­ing on dif­fer­ent mod­els of trains. For this net­work Ger­many espe­cial­ly devel­oped the class VT 11.5. May­bach Motor Works was an essen­tial com­pa­ny to sup­ply both the engines and gear dri­ves — but this inter­est­ing vehi­cle and its Franz Kruck­en­berg designed pre­de­ces­sor DR 137 155 is a sub­ject of its own we will soon be cov­er­ing in more depth.