Schnellzug
The first German express train ran on 1 May 1851 between Berlin and Deutz am Rhein (today part of Cologne) and completed the journey in 16 hours.
From 1889 all such services in Germany were given the standard letter S. From 1892 a new train category with especially comfortable express coaches appeared: the Durchgangszug or D-Zug (plural: D-Züge).
The first D-Züge ran on 1 May 1892 on the following routes: They comprised 1st and 2nd class coaches, dining and sleeping cars (on night trains).
By 1917 almost all Schnellzüge in Germany had been gradually reclassified as D-Züge or converted to supplement-free fast-stopping trains, the so-called Eilzüge.
These expresses took the shortest route between the Wehrmacht's operational theatres (including France, Greece and the Soviet Union) and the Deutsche Reich.
This category was the SFR-Zug (Schnellzug für Fronturlauber mit Reisezugteil or "military express with passenger section").
On 22 September 1945 the first express trains to run after the end of the war worked in the US zone between Frankfurt am Main and Munich.
Not until the delivery of centre-door (Mitteleinstieg) and Halberstädter express coaches were the, by now obsolete, Rekowagen cascaded to less important duties.
In addition the words Deutsche Bundesbahn or, if the coaches were only used on domestic routes, the initials DB were mounted on the sides in silver letters.
For these very fast trains which stopped at just a few stations – as in FD times – a special Fernschnellzug supplement was payable.
In addition, the coaching stock of DC-Züge was no better than the general standard for normal express trains.
Many trains continued to run on as normal D-Züge, several of them being integrated into the Interregio network 10–15 years later (e.g. the Emden–Münster–Hagen–Gießen–Frankfurt/Main service).
These trains, which had individual names, mainly linked the Hamburg area or the Ruhrgebiet with holiday resorts in southern Germany.
The demise of FD-Züge came in the early 1990s as more and more IR, IC and ICE trains served the holiday regions.
These were express trains with few stops, similar to the DB's F-Zug services, but offering both 1st and 2nd class.
After it had disappeared during the 1960s in domestic services, it was re-introduced in the 1969/70 timetable with the arrival of the DR Class VT 18.16 express DMUs.
In 1987 the new category Interexpress (IEx) emerged for international service, to which normal D-Zug fares applied.
[2] Later, in addition to the usual Schnellzug, the Expresszug (Ex) category was introduced along with ÖBB Class 4010 express multiple units (Triebwagenschnellzug orTS).
In Switzerland the Schnellzug train category was not entirely dropped from the SBB network until the timetable change on 12 December 2004, when it was replaced by the terms RegioExpress and InterRegio which can be used in all its official languages.
Until its demise on 9 June 2007 the Diretto in Italy was one of the most important categories, filling the gap between local and long-distance traffic.
In the bulk of railway services in Germany, Austria and Switzerland it only exists as a successor to the Schnellzug in the form of trains like the ICE, the Intercity and the Interregio trains (whose original designation during the planning phase was XD), the latter having been replaced meanwhile in Germany by Intercity services.
The DB still occasionally runs D-Züge in night services, especially to Germany's eastern European neighbours (D-Nacht).
In 2017, the German industrial metal band Eisbrecher, on the album Sturmfahrt, released a song called D-Zug.
