The official reasons were mixed: signal failure was mentioned, as were summer thunderstorms, as was a shortage of staff during the holiday period.

Afterwards I had a look at the national statistics, and was surprised to find that long distance train punctuality is down at 73 percent (compared to a UK performance rating of 79 percent). UK trains better than German ones! That’s a novelty.

Deutsche Bahn says that around 75 per cent of those delays are because the trains are transiting through at least one construction site, due to their massive programme of investment and renovation.

Whatever the reason, it’s all a bit hit and miss. On my way back on this particular journey, all was so on time – nay early – that the ICE from Frankfurt airport to Brussels had to loiter for 15 minutes in the freight yards of Cologne. Schade!

One of the great myths about Germany is that the trains run on time. Increasingly, they don’t. ‘We are one of the richest industrial nations in the world, but we have one of the worst railways in the world!’ screamed a recent headline in Bild.

A key issue is a lack of funding, with only €69 per capita annual spending on infrastructure compared to €165 in the UK and a whopping €362 in Switzerland.

A further issue is the sheer size of Deutsche Bahn, which has myriad business interests across the globe (including Arriva in the UK), to the point where transporting the average German by train is only a small part.
I have had plenty of personal experience of delays over recent years, with a service from Stuttgart to Heidelberg an hour late on a visit in 2016. The following year, waiting for a cancelled train at tiny Sinsheim station in the snow and ice was not an experience I’d care to repeat.

And on my latest visit when travelling from Düsseldorf to Hannover my train was 20 minutes late setting off, not great in itself, but then proceeded to lose a further 45 minutes, meaning I arrived over an hour behind schedule in Hannover.

The next day my 75 minute journey back from Hannover to Magdeburg took just over two hours, with no apparent reason for the delay. After watching a game of football in Magdeburg and needing to catch a flight back to the UK, with my faith in Deutsche Bahn precarious, I left the match early. It was a wise decision, because the train, despite leaving on time, finally arrived an hour and quarter late! Three journeys, three major delays.

All this is a huge shame because rail travel through Germany, something I first experienced whilst living there as part of my degree, is one of the great pleasures in life. The quality of the trains themselves, once they arrive, is superb, and now as the parent of a disabled child I am immensely impressed by the availability of specialist facilities, including a fully accessible toilet.

Tickets are comparatively cheap (if you book in advance) and the extensive network means that it is easily the best means of seeing great swathes of the country. There can few pleasures as great as sitting on a state-of-the-art ICE train and watching the beautiful German countryside rolling past. If only they could run on time!

Surprisingly, this trial wasn’t greeted with jingoistic headlines in the British red-tops about the Germans finally invading via the backdoor, and if there were jests about the unrolling of towels on the sunloungers of St Pancras, I didn’t see them.

No doubt there will be some reactionary old buffers in England who will think that the world is about to come to an end.  They will hold up the example of the Russians, who deliberately changed the gauge of their railway tracks for the specific purpose of preventing any outside powers from being able to run their trains straight through. Well listen up, guys, it’s too late: Deutsche Bahn has already established a sleeper cell, and is currently running all the rail services of Newcastle upon Tyne.

So let’s embrace their arrival. These days, high speed trains are competing head to head with low cost airlines in terms of journey time from city centre to city centre, and the onboard experience is far superior.  Comfort aside, you can get the feel of a place from a train, looking into people’s back yards. Whereas in a car you just stare at the back end of the lorry in front, and on a plane all you can see is the backs of other people’s heads.

And then there are the stations. St Pancras is a fabulous place to begin a journey, Gare du Nord has tons of character, and Cologne has a wonderful location right by the Rhine and the soaring Cathedral. Passengers heading for Germany would be delighted to miss out that (current) change of trains at the dump that is Brussels Midi.

At the moment the debate is about safety, and in particular about power cars: Eurostar has two, one at either end, but the ICE only has one, so is perhaps more vulnerable to breakdown. Surely that will be resolved eventually, and we could start getting some competition into St Pancras. In France, the TGV now has full service trains and low-cost equivalents, both on the same journeys. Sounds like a good scheme to me.

And then there are the sleeper possibilities. Thus far, no high speed train journey has been long enough to justify having sleeper trains, but if they can run through the Tunnel, that could change. Deutsche Bahn’s City Night Line is the best sleeper service in Europe, so I look forward to the time when I can have dinner in London followed by breakfast in Munich, having slept soundly all the way between. The Golden Age of rail travel could be about to return.

And by the way, Germany is not just good at state-of-the-art trains. Have a look at the Harz Mountain Railway.