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Comment by muro | Hacker News Reader

Rostock, I assume on the German side. Took the ferry with my car, was curious about the tracks at the edge of harbour.

I think Puttgarden–Rødby is more likely. It used to be served by diesel ICE trains and it was really fun to ride onto a big old ferry on one of these unusually short ultra-sleek trains, get off the train, walk a lap around it, then go up to the open-air deck and stretch your legs a bit.

There’s still a direct Hamburg–Copenhagen connection via that ferry, but it’s now a normal Eurocity.

I took that diesel ICE in 2008. It blew my mind as well. Another thing I noticed about that train is that it seemed to have discrete gears. I don't know if that's true but my impression was that the train would accelerate and change gears just like in a car/truck (as opposed to a diesel-electric train where the diesel engine generates electricity for an electric motor that drives the wheels).

Diesel locomotives with mechanical transmissions are rare today, but they do exist. Hitachi still makes such transmissions.[1] Here's a train in the UK equipped that way.[2]

[1] http://www.hitachi-nico.jp/en/product/land/transmission/dies... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdFCQE61mSA

Is it not still a diesel ICE, at least sometimes?

I pass through Nørreport station fairly often, and I notice the train to Hamburg if it's passing through.

Yes. At least it was last summer.

Possibly it is only in the summer - I traveled from Hamburg to Copenhagen in November 2017 and there was actually a bus segment from Hamburg to Puttgarden. Then we got on a train which was driven at most 0.25 km onto the ferry.

I tied to book a 100% train/ferry route and it wasn’t available for my travel dates.

Currently (and going back a year or two) there are recurring closures on the danish side in order to upgrade the track to 200 kph. This is a part of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link[1] project. I believe it will be replaced by bus for a couple of months again this spring.

Haven’t seen much about related works on the german side but apparently they occur.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_Fixed_Link

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