Inter-city rail

This article is about express passenger train services in general. For other uses, see Intercity.
"Express passenger train" redirects here. For the train in New South Wales, Australia, see New South Wales XPT. For express trains in general, see Express train.
A Acela Express high-speed train traveling on the busy Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C. in July 2011

Inter-city rail services are express trains that run services that connect cities over longer distances than commuter or regional trains. They include rail services that are neither short-distance commuter rail trains within one city area nor slow regional rail trains stopping at all stations and covering local journeys only. An inter-city train is typically an express train with limited stops and comfortable carriages to serve long-distance travel.

Inter-city rail sometimes provides international services. This is most prevalent in Europe because of the proximity of its 50 countries to a 10,180,000-square-kilometre (3,930,000-square-mile) area.[1] Eurostar and EuroCity are examples. In many European countries, the word InterCity or Inter-City is an official brand name for a network of regular-interval and relatively long-distance train services that meet certain criteria of speed and comfort. That use of the term appeared in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and has been widely imitated.

  1. ^ Nunno, Richard (19 July 2018). "Fact Sheet: High Speed Rail Development Worldwide". eesi.org. Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Retrieved 11 January 2024.