Germany calling #1

Telegrammed by Lord Tee Hee (yesterday)..
Following on from The Velopodist's comments re Germany...

Am on an ICE 3 between Brussels and Frankfurt which is now 25 mins late due to engineering work East of Aachen causing SLW (single line working).

Still, the bar is nice and it's very interesting to listen to the crew being able to inform people what platform their revised connections will leave from.

Despite my train being 25 down near Aachen it still made Frankfurt on time.

Now, what's that about our TOCs padding the timetable?

UPDATE: This just in from the Velopodist...

Lord Tee Hee's comments highlight how infuriatingly variable the German railways are.

He will have reached Frankfurt on time not because of serious timetable padding but because on the Neubaustrecke between Cologne and Frankfurt ICE3s are allowed to go at 330kph instead of 300kph when running late.

So it's pretty hard for them to be late enough not to make up a lot of time doing that.

The trouble is these magnificent trains spend so much of their time trundling over old, twisty, slow infrastructure...