I once met a Hungarian ex-railroader whose job it was to clean up after accidents. The most horrific sight he told of was one kept secret during communism, when an unbraked sleeper carriage with Russian army officials sleeping in it rolled down the mountain, crashing into a freight train at arond 160 km/h - what your acquintances have seen must have been even worse...

Beside the tragedy: I still believe the ICE system is a great thing. And the ICE II and III are fantastic train.

Yeah, good thing you remind me, I forgot to mention: the ICE-2 (the 'half-set' version: tractor head at one end, driving trailer at the other) already has air springs, so it was already built without the faulty wheels; while the ICE-3 even has distributed traction (every second car is motorised). (The again, more cost-cutting idiocy necessitated the replacement of too weak air conditioners in the ICE-3...)

With one serious flaw: the coffee prices are way to high..

:-(... The Mehdorns of this world either don't know the price of coffee outside five-star hotels, or travel by business jet while directing a railway...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}