Giovanni Drogo schrieb am Montag, 27. Dezember 2010 um 09:56:11 UTC+1:

On Sun, 26 Dec 2010, Willms wrote:

I was thinking about the larger metropoles like Rhein-Main and
Rhein-Ruhr.

I may agree that north of Frankfurt/Mainz/Wiesbaden it could not be competitive for a direct journey (although in my opinion the case for
night trains remains).

from Zürich to Milano by one hour, from 3h40 to 2h40. That's
interesting for the Swiss, but the transit from Germany would come
mainly thru the upper Rhine valley, i.e via Basel, from where the
fastest trains (the ones operated by the ETR610, taking 4h10) do not
go via Zürich and the Gotthard, but via Berne and the Lötschberg and Simplon tunnels.

This is something relatively recent, probably due to the opening of the newer (faster) Lötschberg tunnel. In the '80s all traffic from Basel
(and also from Singen-Schaffhausen) to Milan came down via Gotthard. Personally, I regularly travelled from Darmstadt to Milan and vv. with a night train (occasionally at other times of the day, depending on the
hour of perigee

I still believe there were trains Basel – Milan via Brig. I guess you are right
for Schaffhausen.

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bob schrieb am Mittwoch, 22. Dezember 2010 um 11:47:46 UTC+1:

On Dec 21, 6:11 pm, "Willms" <[email protected]d> wrote:

Unfortunately, high speed rail is mostly built for internal traffic within national borders. Only France has HSLs crossing national
borders (Belgium, Great Britain, and now Spain). And little
Switzerland interposed between Germany and Italy is mostly concerned
about its own rather small regional network, not high speed
connections across that small country.

You seem to have forgotten about the worlds largest tunnelling
project, which also meets the EU's definition of high speed rail
(passenger trains at 250 km/h for new build), and is most definitly
not a design focussed on the "rather small regional network", but is primarily focussed on the Germany-Italy international traffic.

Mostly on freight, with a Transalpine „flat“ railway.

For passenger transportation, there are problems:

D – IT tickets via CH only available without change in Switzerland.

One train per day and direction between D and IT via Switzerland.

Not sure whether any existing multisystem trainset can meet the requiremnts even with cab signalling upgraded to run the steep HSL via Limburg Süd.

So, most passengers in the GBT are far from being transit passengers.
The demand rose very much for domestic Zürich ↔ Ticino as
travel times were shortened a lot compared to the overall travel time.

Regards, ULF

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Willms schrieb am Dienstag, 21. Dezember 2010 um 18:11:22 UTC+1:

Unfortunately, high speed rail is mostly built for internal traffic
within national borders. Only France has HSLs crossing national
borders (Belgium, Great Britain, and now Spain).

Speed under the Channel does not exactly meet HS definition?

Since 18.12.2021 there is a fast daytime service between Milan
and Paris using Italian and French high speed lines and slower
sections between them. It's not TGV as they cannot interact with
the signalling equipment on Italian HSL. The operator is not even
SNCF.

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