ICE 3

The ICE 3 is a high-speed electric trainset developed by Siemens and built for Germany's Deutsche Bahn, entering service in 2000 with a design that departed from earlier InterCityExpress generations by distributing traction motors along the length of the train rather than concentrating them in separate locomotive power cars. This distributed-power layout let the ICE 3 keep axle loads lower, which was needed to run at high speed on lines shared with other traffic, and it allowed a fully accessible driving cab at each end with no separate locomotive units. Variants of the ICE 3 were built to run on multiple European electrification and signaling systems, letting it operate through services between Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and it became one of the most widely used high-speed trainset families in continental Europe.