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- Review: You call this a Window Seat?!? Deutsche Bahn’s new ICE 4
My first encounter with the ICE 4
Imagine this.
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You are at Munich station picking someone up from a train about to arrive. Perhaps your wife and baby. Behind you, a brand new ICE 4, the smell of new train wafting out the doors. A futuristic bleeping sets in, the doors close in a flurry of flashing LED lights .
So this is the future, and I’m in it. Wow. With a subtle, soothing sigh the breaks release and the train noiselessly sets itself in motion, gliding majestically out into the sunlight.
You scratch your armpit and adjust your shopping bag. They should be here any moment.
View from the entrance into an ICE 4 carriage
Suddenly. a text message
Suddenly, a text message:
we can’t get into our platform. It is blocked by a broken down train.
You look up from your phone, up the line, and there you see it: that vision of things to come, the ICE4, speadeagled across the points of four platforms, grinning like an oblivious python. 45 minutes later it draws back to the platform it left and expels its passengers. It only made it 100 yards towards Hamburg.
You take your wife and baby home an hour late to a lunch of warm beer and cold chicken.
The Story of the ICE 4
The ICE 4s are the biggest order ever placed by Deutsche Bahn. For more than €5 bn they ordered 130 of these trains, with a contract in place for 300. This train is set to become the backbone of German fast rail transport.
A present for German Industry
As Deutsche Bahn is owned by the German state, it was important that German manufacturers got a slice of this lovely cake. In this case it was Siemens and Bombardier.
The Fliegende Hamburger came from the same factory as today’s ICE 4 coaches – Görlitz
The carriages are made by Bombardier in Görlitz, a city that has been making trains for 160 years, while all the electrical stuff is supplied by Siemens from all over its engineering empire.
OK, I get it. Enough background.
Enough Background. What is the ICE 4 like?
After the unfortunate first meeting, things got much better. I’ve been on the ICE 4 several times and can now tell you what it is like.
On my first trip I got on at 5:55 AM and saw the LED-lighting in action. Apparently it adjusts to the time of day in all sorts of colours. All I saw was orange in the morning and white as the day progressed. I loved the orange light.
Since then all I’ve seen is white – presumably it is controlled manually and whoever controls it forgets about it. It would be interesting if there was a light setting for crowd control, for calming down mutinous passengers on an overcrowded, delayed ICE.
Soothing orange light early in the morning
The ICE 4: General Description
The ICE 4 is formed of twelve extra-long coaches. It is painted in the usual white with a red line along its side. The train has three first class carriages, a restaurant car that has some first class seating as well as the compartment for parents with toddlers, and nine second class carriages.
The carriage numbers are painted on – Deutsche Bahn has learnt the hard way that nothing beats good old analogue.
Outside of an ICE 4 carriage. Notice the painted on carriage number in addition to the LED display
All of the carriages are open plan seating. The only actual compartment is the one for parents with toddlers.
Its top speed is 250km/h. Though not as fast as the first generation ICE (280km/h) or the ICE 3 (330 km/h), this is ample. On a network plagued by engineering (or the lack of it), trains rarely attain their top speed. A faster train would have cost more with no benefit whatsoever.
As the carriages are very long, they have to be correspondingly narrow to remain within the German loading gauge. The reduced diameter is noticeable. This is also why the ICE 4 has little gangways that roll out to bridge the yawning gap between the train and the platform.
Second class on the ICE 4
The second class comes with standard 2+2 seating (that is, two seats each side of the aisle).
Though some of the chairs are arranged in blocs of four grouped around a table, most are arranged two-by-two behind each other, always facing the middle of the carriage.
Thus whichever direction the train is travelling, half of the seats are facing backwards, half forwards.
Second class on the ICE 4
What is wise of DB is to have generous, easily accessible luggage racks.
Generous baggage rack on the ICE 4
All in all this is a fairly pleasant second class experience, much nicer and more spaceous than the rather cramped second class on the ÖBB Railjet with its frozen-spinach coloured seats and linoleum floor or, God help us, the smartie-coloured man-trap that is SNCF’s TGV Duplex.
The infamous ICE 4 seats: I think they are great.
There have been many complaints, in fact mass hysteria about the new model of seats Deutsche Bahn has installed in the ICE 4. People have been saying they are torture chairs from hell.
Second class seats on the ICE 4. The head rests are very comfortable
Perhaps there is something wrong with my back (I did do ballroom dancing for ten years) but I find them superbly comfortable.
They have a nice high head and proper ears that support your head nicely as you snooze. They do not recline, instead the bottom bit slips forward, pulling the back rest after it. The benefit is that a reclining seat doesn’t invade your space, thus preventing aircraft-style brawls.
I also like the little displays on the head-rests, showing from where to where the seat is reserved. This is easy to see and to read.
See yourself on the map – Georgian Railways already had this ten years ago
The free Wifi works well enough wherever there is a decent LTE signal. This isn’t everywhere, but that is hardly Deutsche Bahn’s fault. In the second class each device is allowed 200MB of data volume
First class
The first class comes with 2+1 seating and leather chairs. Apart from being made of leather and spaced a bit further apart, they follow the same design pattern as those in the second class. They aren’t more comfortable.
First class seating on the ICE 4. The seats are the same, just leather and spaced further apart
The carpet is the same and so is the Wifi signal. The only difference here is unlimited data volume per device.
Why go first class? It’s breathing space and elbow room more than the seats that make first class more pleasant on the ICE 4.
Travelling with a baby?
Have you got a baby? I have, these days, and I love that Deutsche Bahn has a nice separate compartment in which you can let it run around. Or breastfeed.
Seats in the toddler’s compartment on the ICE 4
Sometimes people with nowhere to sit will find their way into the toddler’s compartment, but they cannot complain. And if you roll up with a baby, you can make them move.
This is something Deutsche Bahn has solved very well: the toddler’s compartment is next to the guard’s van, so there is always someone to help you, the restaurant car is next door, and there is a nice toilet with a changing mat. It is all very well done, on all ICE and Intercity trains.
The bicycle section
Until the ICE 4 was introduced, it was dogma that no bicycles are allowed on ICEs. The German bicycle club never stopped lobbying for this to be changed.
Now that many Intercities are being replaced with ICEs, DB has grudgingly accepted that the ICE 4 has to transport bicycles. So it has a small section with eight slots for bikes. These have to be reserved at the cost of €9.
Bicycle section in carriage 1 on the ICE 4
Some smart people think that if they have their bicycle in a bag or a cardboard box it can go free as baggage.
Wrong. The other day on my Flixtrain, running at full capacity, I found a man blocking six seats with his bicycle in a nylon holdall. I went mad. I made him put it where it belonged and charged him the full bicycle price – the alternative being he pay for six seats.
The only bikes that can go free are the truly collapsable ones that fold into a small carrier bag.
Anyway, I haven’t tried to load a bicycle into the ICE 4, but the set up looks usable. Just remember: carriage 1 is for bicycles and you need a reservation. As many older ICEs don’t take bikes, it is wise to book as far in advance as you can.
You call this a Window Seat?!?
Now for my one big complaint. A preposterous amount of seats on this train have no window, or a tiny sliver of one. Since trains have started to be measured in price per seat and kilometre travelled, window seats have gone out the window. This is one of many symptoms of the bottom-line doing the designing on the ICE 4.
This isn’t even one of the worst examples. And it is in the first class.
Now, when booking a seat on an ICE, if the train you are dealing with is an ICE 4, you are likely to specify a window seat and find yourself next to the wall. At the same time, the spacious and desperately needed baggage racks afford your suitcase a fantastic view right next to the window.
This is just really cack-handed design, an example of DB’s bean counters shitting on us passengers. It could have been avoided, but all that mattered was cost. Bizarrely, the first class is just as bad as the second class.
The things I do for you
I go to great lengths for you, my readers. One of these lengths is to walk from end to end on the ICE 4 with a furrowed brow, muttering to myself, writing stuff down. I even had to explain myself to the guard.
I have compiled a list of all the seats that have no window. And believe me, it is long. You can find the list of all the unwindow-seats as a handy download in the e-guide library. If you subscribe to my email list you have free, life-long access to my e-guide-library – even if you unsubscribe.
I digress: Business Administrators
When I went to university, nearly everyone I met was starting a degree in Business Administration (me, I enrolled in Russian Linguistics). Wherever I went, everyone was studying this thing. They still are. “Why?” I asked. “Well,” they said, “you can do anything afterwards, and work for anyone”.
Bean counters downsizing window seats
Business Administration is neither a science nor a humanity. It is an ideology. As a university subject it is as divorced from science as Marxism-Leninism was in East Germany. Business Administration’s central premise is scarcity. There is never enough of anything, especially money, so it has to be saved. You have to cut costs and close your factories.
What about some more seats here?
Now this vast army of Business Administrators has been let loose on the world and is saving money everywhere, meaning that everyone has less and works more.
The brightest Business Administrators work for PwC, Accenture and Roland Berger, the Angels of Downsizing. The dull, stupid ones end up working for Deutsche Bahn, laying waste to everything they can cross out with their red pencils. Night trains, for instance.
Business Administrators shift the focus from making quality products to making money. They have destroyed Cadbury’s, they have smashed Wedgwood, and they’ve got their teeth deep into Marks and Spencer’s.
At Deutsche Bahn their influence is ever more noticeable, and the ICE 4 is a good example.
But I digress.
Restaurant car
The restaurant car is very nice, with both a bar area and a proper seated restaurant section. They have nice Bitburger beer on tap and an astounding variety of quite tasty, reasonably priced food.
The restaurant car on the ICE 4
Of course it is all warmed up, but real food has long disappeared from Western trains, and as it goes, this is quite good. It is much better than the hospital food DON serves on the Railjet these days, but it cannot compare with a Polish or Slovak restaurant car, where your food is still cooked to order.
Unfortunately even in the restaurant car the windows and seating are not on speaking terms. Sip your coffee and admire the beam between the windows.
The secret section: the best seats on the ICE 4
At the very front and at the very rear (carriages 1 and 14), if you get on through the door nearest to the driving cab and then turn towards the driving cab, you enter a small section of eight seats in second class or six seats in first class which feels nicely closed off from the rest of the train and where the seats are perfectly aligned with the windows.
My favourite seats on the ICE 4
It is a dead end, so you don’t get any confused people barrelling backwards and forwards bellowing the place down. Only drivers pass through. Though open to anyone, people seem to avoid it.
Sadly, you can’t see into the driving cab, since you ask. DB has done away with that.
How to use this train
I have tried to put myself into the shoes of various travellers and work out where I can recommend who sits. Here is what I have come up with:
Solo travellers / couples
You are fine almost everywhere. Most of the seats are two-by-two. Consider going first-class if there is a good deal. If you want to ensure you have a window, download my guide to the un-window seats on the ICE 4 and reserve yourself something nice. I would probably get myself something not too far from the restaurant car.
Two toilets at the end of nearly every carriage
Groups
As a group between four and eight people I would try and snaffle the secret area in carriage No. 1, about which I waxed lyrical earlier. Bring your own food and drink and forget about the distant restaurant car.
Whenever I’ve tried to reserve a seat in the secret area outright it has been unreservable, yet when I got on the train, nothing was reserved. It is possible that these seats are always unreserved.
Families
Book yourself the toddler’s compartment if you can – you have to be travelling with a child under six to get it.
I cannot emphasise enough how great the toddlers’ compartment is. The so-called “family area” is just the same as everywhere else, only that it is noisy and smells of sausage and hard-boiled eggs.
Toddler’s compartment on the ICE 4
If you cannot get the toddler’s compartment, try and get yourself somewhere else, anywhere else, with a table, or the secret section in carriage No. 1. If travelling with a baby and there is no space in the toddler’s compartment, make for the secret section, as it is peaceful.
Interrailers and Eurailers
Germany is one of the rail-pass friendly countries. There are no compulsory reservations on any DB trains. So you can use all ICE trains without paying a penny extra.
If you are in a group, the same advice applies as for any other group. If your are tired and want to sleep, make for the secret section in carriage No. 1.
These seats have at least half a window
If you want to spread out on the floor and picnic, again, carriage No. 1 is best for you, provided the bicycle area is empty.
Big warning: on one of my trips, the WiFi signal barely reached the secret section. If you value WiFi, best go somewhere else.
What I like about the ICE 4
Having been on the ICE 4 several times I have discovered that I like the infamous seats. They are comfortable and have the best headrests I know of in German rail.
I like the toddler’s compartment and I think the restaurant is a very pleasant place to be with its new, discreet colour scheme and its bar area.
What I really like is the two secret, quiet compartments at the front and the back of the train. Another good thing is that they seem to have installed lots of toilets that are easy to find.
Also well done is the ample space for luggage. I resent that it blocks windows, but the benefit is you can have your luggage near where you are sitting.
Baggage rack on the ICE 4
What I don’t like about the ICE 4
What is really bad is the window/seat situation. This never used to be a problem, why does technical progress mean window seats with no windows? It is just sloppy can’t-be-fuckedness.
When I go to the restaurant car from my lair in carriage 1, I have to go through nine or ten coaches that look exactly the same, and are very long and rather narrow.
After the third carriage this gets rather unsettling. As most people are wearing their DB-faces they all look the same as well. I lose track of where I am as I stumble through winter upon winter of discontent.
Conclusion
The first ICE was devised at the end of the 1980s to reclaim the elites for rail travel. It was a luxury train from the start. No expense was spared.
No redesign has been able to banish the feeling of comfort and luxury from the ICE 1. If an arm-chair could be a train, this would be it.
The world from which the ICE 1 hails
The ICE 4 is from a world light-years away – a clinical, hyper-optimised, homogenised dystopia. The elusive “elite”, even elite Deutsche Bahn staff, goes everywhere by air, even within Germany – this is not their train.
The world for which the ICE 4 is made
From its very inception the ICE 4 was supposed to be cheap and to transport as many homogenised consumers as possible, ensconced unspeaking in their virtual realities, plugs in ears, eyes on screens. Maybe this is why they haven’t troubled to align the windows with the seats. Our windows are on our screens.
Don’t let this happen. Travel, don’t be transported. A train trip is something to be experienced and savoured. Looking out the window, with the landscape drifting by, lost in thoughts you might not have had otherwise. It is possible, even on this train. I hope now you know how.
This is a great review Edward, the pictures in particular are great and I didn’t know about the ambient lighting, one of the criticisms I had about my first (and so far only) experience on these trains was how bright the white-light ambience is, it’s almost dazzling.
When I boarded, my first impressions of the 1st class cabin, wasn’t that positive.
These trains do seem to lack the wow factor of the ICE 3s, particularly in 1st class.
Travelling by those had led to an expectation that these ICE 4s would be a step up and that doesn’t seem to be the case.
But I should have perhaps managed my expectations because it seems from the development of these ICE 4s, that they’re weren’t and aren’t intended as replacements for the ICE 3s. (Is that right?)
When judged by the original intention, as a replacement for the ICs, then the ICE 4s are a success.
But like you I prefer the ICE 1s and given a choice I would still choose to travel on an updated ICE 1, so what I’m struggling to understand is why these ICE4s were then switched to being ICE 1 replacements?
Though I agree with you that once I’d taken my seat it was comfortable enough, but it’s interesting that pretty much the same seats are used in 2nd class.
Because it’s the first impressions of these seats that lets down the 1st class ambience – they just don’t ‘look’ exceptionally comfortable compared to other 1st class seats IMHO.
The info screens are of course useful, particularly in the event of delays, but I’m a bit surprised that DB seems to think they’re a major innovation, when they seen to be fairly standard now, on virtually any new European train.
Though I much preferred the ICE 4 to the ICE Ts, so I think it’s a big step in the right direction that these ICE 4s are to replace ICE Ts on the Berlin to Munchen via Nurnberg route.
Thank you for reading, Simon!
When they first became a thang, these trains, they were called the ICx (though that name was understood to be provisional) and were meant to come in two different versions – a slower, shorter one to replace the Intercitys (230 km/h, seven carriages), then a longer, faster version (249 km/h, twelve coaches) to replace the ICE1s. Then they got rebranded the ICE4 and so far only long ones have appeared. In the course of the project DB kept altering its specifications. Now they are upping the top speed to 265 km/h and adding another carriage.
The Intercitys will be with us for a while yet (thank God. I like Intercitys).
As for innovation: DB and Siemens were both playing it safe. There is no real innovation on this train. Only gimmicks. The power car setup was pioneered in British Rail’s APT in the 1970s. 250 km/h is underwhelming when Italy’s Frecciarossa 1000 is achieving 360 km/h. The ambient lighting hardly counts as innovation, especially when it is always searing laboratory-white. And the info screens… Georgian Railways had them on their Chinese-made Batumi-Tbilisi trains ages ago. The ÖBB Railjet has had them for a decade.
Weren’t your Flixtrain carriages built in Görlitz?
I don’t think so. Görlitz built double-decker carriages and sleeping cars for the whole of the erstwhile Comecon. You can still find a lot of them in Eastern Europe. My ex-East German Flixcoaches were built in Bautzen – the other big GDR-wagonworks. Then I’ve got lots of ex-Bundesbahn stock built all over West Germany. I assume in DB workshops such as Minden or Kassel.
Thank you for this very thorough and informative review! My next rail trip through Germany will not be taking me on an ICE4 but when that does happen I will use your seat list to get a real window seat!
Also good to see that DB understands that a real restaurant is a valuable amenity and one reason for people to choose the train rather than a long-distance coach.
One small thing: I don’t agree with you that second class on ÖBB Railjets is uncomfortable. Yes, the colour scheme is rather drab (Ceske Drahy have a smarter blue colouring in their Railjet second class interior) but I find the seats very comfortable and the legroom very good. The seats on the Swedish SJ 2000 are perhaps slightly better but the superbly smooth ride of the Railjet means that for me it is the most comfortable second class environment I have yet travelled in.
Thank you for your comment and your remarks.
I think you are right – perhaps I have been a bit unjust towards the 2nd class on the Railjet – thank you for adding your experience here. I’ve never been on the Czech one yet – I must try it out at the next opportunity.
DB tried very hard to get rid of its restaurant cars, but luckily people wouldn’t stand for it. Eventually DB understood that without a restaurant car people would not be using their trains. Loos on trains don’t make money either, but that doesn’t mean you can leave them out.
I went on the SJ X2000 from Copenhagen to Stockholm in 2015. That really is a fab train – it is a bit like the ICE 1 in its luxuriousness.
Thank you for reading and buon viaggio.
Just a quick note: There is no ICE Sprinter supplement anymore, neither for people with normal domestic tickets nor for those with rail passes. Nowadays, it’s just a brand for the real high-speed ICEs not stopping at each tiny village such as Limburg Süd.
Thank you for your quick note and sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you – 13 days of Flixtrain. You are absolutely right and I have already edited the post accordingly.
Thank you for reading!
Why don’t they make a train with two decks?
The french fast train do. Wouldn’t it be more convenient and cheap?
Well, there is the new IC2. But its maximum speed is 160 km/h and so far it hasn’t been very popular. Thank you for reading!
I dislike the chairs. The headrests are no rest, as they keep vertical even if the rest of the chair is “reclined”, i.e. pulled forward. The “ears” of the chairs contribute to the poor lookout to the windows, esspecially if the window next to your seat ends a short way in front of it.
Inadequate bashing of economists.
If windows are not alighnde to seats, this is rather a consequence of poor design or poor engineering. In this case changes to the layout after original concept may have contributed (I think the quite spacious luggage racks were added later).
Thank you for your comment! I know, it is inadequate, isn’t it? I’m not sure if there are adequate words.
Many factors contribute to bad seat/window alignment, I think. Basic human comfort has been reduced to one factor among many. I’m writing this from a very comfortable seat on an Ersatz-IC. Nice Bundesbahn-Era armchairs.
Thank you for reading.
Hi Edward. I work for an airline and you are dead right. When an airline makes an order for a new type of aircraft or a redesign of a part of the existing fleet, there is ALWAYS a fight between the revenue and design parts of the business leading as you say to some poor outcomes for the passenger, whether plane, or train. Sometimes, lack of consultation with crew, such as yourself, can also make things hard for such employees.
My airline had a famous case of new ovens in one type of new aircraft. Unfortunately the flight service crew staff were not consulted on these ovens leading to very long times for meal service and very frustrated crew and customers alike when the new aircraft were introduced into service!
Thank you for backing me up, Simon! Fascinating story with the ovens.
Poor design is genrelly not an issue of poor management, and esspecially is not taught at MBA cources.
In this case, DB had apparently decided later on to install more baggage racks (i.e. less seats) than originally intended. Maybe this has a relation to the poor alignment between seats and windows?
DB could make the different cars of a ICE4 train a little more “regognizable” by just orienting some carriages the other way round (i.e. having the toilets and different ends) which of course would need to be taken into account at service stop layout as well) or merely by using a variation of interior colours per car (“my seat is in the green car”).
What I do not understand in all ICE trains is why the space under the seats is not better used for baggage.
I wonder why the windows on new ICE trains don’t seem to get bigger over time. That’s the trend with all other modes of transportation (cars, buses, trams, even airplanes). It’s like the ICE is emulating the airplanes a little too much with the tiny windows ?
I’d love taller windows with smaller gaps in between. I actually feel claustrophobic in some of these seats.
I totally agree. Thanks for commenting!
An excellent article and very interesting. I am dismayed to hear that the DB has succumbed to listening to bean counters who know the price of everything and the value of nothing and as a result abandoned the idea of lining up windows with seats. As a Scot I am well used to this kind of penny pinching. We Brits were inflicted with the idea when Thatcher was in charge and I suspect exported it everywhere else to eager to save cash grey-in-mind-and-body accountants. Since the late seventies and on grounds of ecomony, British Railways has only built one bodyshell for first and second class coaches with the result that the seats line up in first class but not in second where your newly discovered seat with a view of the window pillar has been common to us for forty years. Our Local trains are the same. It’s lousy, bottom-line design ethics that basically say “up yours” to the fare-paying passenger…and in a crass capitulation to free market consumerism, we in Britain are no longer even passengers. We’re customers. Ugh!
Thank you, Alan, for your comment! I really enjoyed it. Bottom-line design-ethics does describe it nicely. It is much the same in continental Europe as well. I’ll give you any local train in Germany as an example.
Thanks for reading and commenting!