It is important to note the price of travel by train in Germany varies a lot depending on variables. You can order your ticket months in advance and get a specific seat (in the ICE) at a specific fare (ie. a trainseat at a specific time & date). This allows for massive discounts. However you're inflexible in your schedule and spot. Consider the following hypothetical examples:
1) You order 3 months in advance and can get a discount of 75%. 2) You order 3 weeks in advance and can get a discount of only 25%-50%. 3) You want to order 2 days in advance and can't even get on the train anymore since its full (ICE). You think you can travel by ICE and buy your ticket on the spot and can't since its full. Grumbled you buy a ticket -at full price- for the RE/IC and have to swap trains all the time which also stop more often.
Note that right now its mid december so it is going to be difficult to book cheap for end of december.
Since Germany is a large country you'll practically end up travel by ICE if you travel through the country. For example, the full price of a one way ticket from Ruhr area to Berlin is ~115 EUR.
So, it is interesting how much time in advance one has to order with Locomore. Apparently one can only order online and not via DB sale points. But how does the ticket work then? Does one have to print it out or can it be shown on a smartphone?
I don't know how pricing works in other countries apart from The Netherlands. IC in The Netherlands have free WiFi, but it requires one to log in with a web browser. No cryptography is used in the connection either.
The article mentions the following:
> and a journey on a recycled (dare I say vintage) train that runs entirely on sustainably sourced green electricity.
I'd like to know which sustainably sourced green electricity. Because nuclear energy is also considered 'green' these days. Not sure if that is true in Germany.
> Europe’s railways have already seen substantial deregulation and privatization—often, as in Britain, with highly negative results.
Yeah, there's a national system akin to Oyster card in The Netherlands. Easy to log in and out and once they swapped from Mifare, more secure. Yet if you swap train of a different company (and they're more rampant here than in Germany, apparently) you need to log out and in. If you don't, you are considered free riding and get a fine of 35 EUR plus the fare price. If this ever happens to you in The Netherlands know that you can appeal a fine once a year by phone or the website. So you can get your money back.