The commute is up to about an hour again, enough for trains of thought to develop. There are options now: regional train or S-Bahn. You need to change once in any case. That’s new. What exactly is an S-Bahn, Stadt-Schnellbahn? The atmosphere is different to the atmosphere among commuters on a Class 365, or on its successor, the 387. These felt like real trains. The Class 700 was a step towards a connected metro feeling: connected carriages, harder seats, more like the S-Bahn, especially when on a stopping service, but with toilets. On a commuter train to London everyone is, by definition, aiming for the same place. The S-Bahn is a cross between the London commuter train and the underground. You don’t know where people will be getting on or off, you don’t develop that sense of common purpose that you get after forty minutes of sitting or standing together. In November before the move, when the commute was only about ten minutes long, I observed three young rascals sitting on the floor in the …