On Thu, 12 Feb 2004, John Rowland wrote:

"Aidan Stanger" wrote in message
...
John Rowland wrote:

Incidentally, the S in S-Bahn does not stand for
surface, suburban or any equivalent German term.
It stands for "Stadt" (city) and relates to
the way an S-Bahn is funded and owned.
[..]
As Germany has (over the last few years)
gained several Stadtbahnen (light rail lines)
which are quite different from S-bahnen, I don't
believe you!

Crossposted to MTRE for extra input. Please would someone support or refute
my comments above!

When the Munich S-Bahn opened (I was working there at the time), we
were given to understand that the S in that case was for "Schnell".
It's a heavy-rail system operating on the regular DB overhead power
system (although with high-level platforms). Quite different from the
situation in Berlin, or Hamburg, or Koeln... - which also differ from
each other in various ways.

So I'd say "it depends".