A film about the German Railways ICE (InterCityExpress) trains which were introduced in 1991.
This film starts with views of these trains at Mannheim railway station, then it looks inside the train, showing both open and compartment seating areas plus the buffet, the restaurant, an electronic display showing the speed (224 km/h - 139 mph!!!) and more.
Only first class seating areas are seen - when I did most of my filming, which was between 1992 and 1994, I mostly used regional railpasses and because second class was usually very crowded I travelled first class. Although more expensive it meant that I avoided crying children and hordes of students with backpacks! Technically I was supposed to pay a supplement (an extra fare) to travel on the ICE trains but this only happened if the on-train staff checked the tickets.
The ICE trains had a high specification, every carriage had state-of-the-art electronic displays showing information about the journey and the train, there was an eight channel at-seat audio entertainment system and in some carriages there were also seat-back televisions (for both first and second class).
What the trains did not have were USB power sockets for smartphones etc., but that is understandable, since at the time both USB and smartphones were unknown technologies that belonged to the realm of science fiction!
Some of the features seen in my film were removed during the 2005-8 fleet refurbishment, but at the same time power sockets for personal electronics were added.
The footage in this film comes from three different journeys, on one of them some leather armchairs were seen in the restaurant area!
Much of the footage in this video was filmed whilst using an external wide-angle lens. Alas, when I started editing video on a computer in 1998 I discovered that this wide-angle lens clipped the image corners.
