High-speed route
ICE International
Amsterdam → Frankfurt · Netherlands · Germany
ICE International in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 440 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 56 min
- Average speed
- 112 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- DB / NS
- Train
- ICE 3neo · Class 408
- Countries
- Netherlands, Germany
- In service since
- 2000
- Runs
- every 1–2 h
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
ICE 3M multi-system sets leave Amsterdam and, past Cologne, dive onto the 300 km/h Cologne–Rhine/Main line with its motorway-style gradients.
The Dutch run of the ICE International leaves Amsterdam over the polders, crosses the Rhine where the bridge at Arnhem entered wartime legend, and slips into Germany at Emmerich. Cologne grants the ritual two-minute cathedral view across the Hohenzollern bridge, and then comes the payoff: the 2002 high-speed line over the Westerwald, 300 km/h on 4% grades, delivering Frankfurt in under four hours from the IJ. It is the workhorse link between Schiphol’s hinterland and the euro’s home city.
How this line was checked
- The 438 km this route shares with OpenStreetMap relation 379647 is drawn from that relation's own nodes, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: 98.1% of this line lies within 250 m of real track (median 6 m); the longest stretch away from it is 2.5 km
- Checked against the running timetable via ÖBB Scotty: our line sits 0.2 km from the shape of ICE 123
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Utrecht and the polder edge
- Rhine crossing at Arnhem
- Cologne cathedral pause
- Westerwald 300 km/h grades
- Frankfurt banking skyline
Read more on Wikipedia (in DE) ↗
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