Eurail ticket "train type" symbols

Different types of trains, mostly speed classifications.

For example, TGV is the designator for France's fastest rail lines and in Italy there are three classes:

ES or sometimes ES* (called Eurostar Alta Velocia (sp?) is the Italian express trains system.
IC is the mid-speed trains.
R is the regional or local, slowest trains.

CNL is City Night Line for certain night trains. EC is Eurocity for trains that run between Italy, France, Switzerland and possibly a couple of other countries. IC in Italy is Intercity. I believe that ICE is a German train category.

In addition to Lee's post: ICE means InterCity Express and is a German bullet train, equivalent to the Train a Grand Vitesse (TGV) in France. City Night Line (CNL), which as Lee stated correctly now handles all kind of over night trains in the German speaking markets plus adjacent countries, is controlled by DB AutoZug GmbH, Dortmund, Germany and CityNightLine AG Zürich - both are 100% subsidiaries of Deutsche Bahn AG (German Rail).

I had to delete my previous post because I found typo errors and this website would not let me go back an edit them (I kept getting a "website not available message when I pressed edit". Andreas, are you getting that same error with your posting?

This is my original posting.

First, Eurail is only a company formed by the various national railroads in Europe for the purpose of marketing railpasses to travelers outside of Europe. It has no control over the naming of train types in Europe.

To understand the train situation in Europe, you must understand that, despite the European Union, Europe is still, in may ways, very nationalistic. Until recently, the trains of one country ran freely within the border of that country, but, with few exceptions, never beyond. The French, for instance, would not have tolerated a German Rail train running into Paris. Nor would the Germans have accepted a French Rail train running into Frankfurt.

The way around this was to form international companies, owned by all the national railroads, to operate trains spanning the national borders. Hence, on the line from, say Cologne to Munich, there might be an Intercity (IC) train, operated by German Rail, every two hours, on the alternate hour there would be an EuroCity train (Eurocity being a conglomerate run by many railroad) that would go from Brussels to Vienna, via Cologne and Munich. Sometimes, in order to operate a faster train within a country but not subject to the control of the national railroad, quasi "private" corporations have been formed to run certain high speed trains. Examples would be TGV in Italy and Italian EuroStar (ES*) in Italy. These trains are "owned" by the national railroads, but somewhat independent and can therefore demand an extra passholder supplement over and above the nation’s railpass.

CityNightLine used to be a Swiss chartered, totally owned subsiderary of German Rail. There were also four other night train lines (EuroNight, DB Nachtzug, and two others) that were owned by German Rail in consortium with other national railroad through which countries they ran. They seem to recently have become consolidated into CityNightLine, which I suspect is no longer wholly owned by German Rail.

In Germany, there are some private railroads that are running trains on the national rail lines under Germany’s privatization policy. In Bavaria these include the Bayern Oberland Bahn (BOB) and the Allgäu Express (ALX), which accept the railpasses that are valid on the rest of German Rail.

Lee, so far I haven't seen that error message, sorry.