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You don't need separate stations, just enough separate tracks. Berlin Hbf for example has its ICE trains mainly arrive in the basement level, with regional and local trains on physically higher levels (worth seeing for anyone visiting). But most large cities' main stations have 10+ parallel tracks, usually with a large junction a km or so each side to let trains funnel into the correct platform (see e.g. Hannover: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/52.3813/9.7435). Plenty of room for local, regional and ICE trains to be all together.

Yes, you're right. That was what I actually meant, sorry for being unclear. They should share the actual building, but not the platforms and (idealy) tracks.

No worries, I figured you might have meant that but thought I'd clarify for others reading just in case!

> That's the "great" thing about the old Intercity trains from the 80s (some carriages are even from the 60s, being initially used in Trans Europe Express Trains[1]): They don't have this feature.

The limiting factor is breaking. The PZB train safety system require that you get down from 160 km/h to zero within 1000 meters. For trains that do not have the break hundredths to make this, the maximum speed needs to be reduced. Freight trains usually have a maximum speed of 100 km/h or lower. Or, for passenger trains with varying amounts of mass, impose a mass limit.

Better brakes are difficult because the friction points between the wheels and the tracks are small. The french have approaches on this.

LZB and ECTS help by giving the conductor in-cab information about oncoming signals, but installation on the tracks has been sluggish. IIRC ETCS is mandated to replace LZB, but ETCS is quite expensive.

Right, but those old carriages don't have weight sensors. So there is no way of knowing if they are overloaded or not, apart from optical estimation, right? Break hundredths are entered manually on those trains, AFIAK.

I'm not saying that it would be legal to drive an overweight IC in the upper PZB setting. :D

But I've used Intercitys (and old regional trains) that were so full that not even the conductors could move anymore. That doesn't happen anymore with the new trains. I have a hard time believing that the railroad carriages were not overloaded at that moment.

> Yeah, seperate stations (edit: platforms, they can share the building) for high-speed trains will probably never happen, sadly. And as long as high speed trains share the platforms with regional trains, disruptions and delays will always affect both.

This is the case for some stations, e.g. Berlin Hbf or Dresden Hbf. Anecdotally I've never experienced delays due to waiting in front of the station there, unlike e.g. Hamburg or Hannover where platforms are shared.

Could you not have separate platforms in the same station, with the lines being essentially unbroken?

You could (I would even say those would be seperate stations then, even if they share the building), but virtually no station is build that way and it would cost quite a lot of money to "untangle" the tracks. Probably too much money.

Doesn't help that most high-speed trains drive on a mix of seperate high-speed tracks and normal tracks shared with regional and freight trains, making complete seperation impossible. :/

Fortunately, they'll never happen. How are you supposed to get your connecting regional train if it doesn't stop at the same station? And it's often a huge advantage of rail that your journey starts and ends near the city center.

You're absolutely right, I meant seperate platforms and tracks that can (and should) be in the same building as regional trains. Like Berlin Main Station or Shinjuku in Japan.