Trains in Germany

Anyone know what the bike restrictions are?

It seems that:

• ICE ist verboeten.
  
• Thalys accept bikes in a bag.
  
• Local services are wheel on, wheel off, but take several years to get anywhere.
  But I'm getting conflicting stories from various places.
  
  

Anyone know if the CTC transparent bag is acceptable on Thalys?

If you've got a bike bag you can take it on an ICE, although I doubt you're gonna get away with the CTC plastic one. I got my bag for £30 from SJS.

Ah - I need something disposable because I will be cycling back to Cambridge from Cologne, and I don't really want to tin 30 quid just to cart my bike around.

I might fly into Frankfurt instead.

i went from the border with Denmark to Munchengladbach last summer on the train without any issues, change at Hamburg, both trains i put the bike near a doorway in the passenger carriage inspectors didn't utter a word

it rained so heavily during that journey the carriage flooded !

I don't suppose you know which train company you used, do you?

deutsche bahn i think

But was it an ICE (bullet train) you used?

ah no it was an all stations kind of thing i wasn't in any hurry

often you have to pay an extra ticket for your bike! and as stated above, only in the ice it's not allowed to get your bike with. then the only way is a bike bagage.

no extra price for my journey as far as i can recall

depends on the type of train (intercity, regio,...)

As already posted, ICE (inter city express) trains generally can't be used with (unpacked, assembled) bikes.

For IC (inter city) and EC (euro city), a reservation in advance is needed.

Almost all other trains transport bikes without previous reservation. There are some exceptions in the suburban railway systems around some larger cities such as Hamburg or in the Rhein/Ruhr area, where bikes are not transported during the morning rush-hour.

The German Rail website http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/ provides a lookup function for bike-compatible connections.

So the tour has started. Huge thanks to Lenni for the bike bag loan - I will shove it in the post in Cologne.

Annoying tweets about the tour can be found at

http://www.twitter.com/simonhorrobin

I'm getting the train out to Cologne from Hither Green to meet up with three others. They left for Berlin on their bikes two weeks ago.* They are currently cycling from Cambridge out to Berlin, then onto Marlburg where I meet them and we all cycle back to Cambridge through Cologne.

I'm doing all of this on a Trek District.* I'm a bit nervous about the hills east of Cologne, but I reckon Jelly Babies will get me through it.