> overstaffed Deutsche Bahn is def. not over- but understaffed. It used to be the case that there was at least one person on each platform, they had signal box

> overstaffed Deutsche Bahn is def. not over- but understaffed. It used to be the case that there was at least one person on each platform, they had signal boxes all over the place, and (very probably) many more workshops and train depots distributed all over the country. Now they're running (trying to run, or trying not to stand still really) everything from a few centralized places. Add to this that they have dismantled ALL freight yards in the cities (Berlin, Hanover, Frankfurt, everywhere) and Deutsche Post switched from transporting mail in special night trains to clogging the highways with their trucks and it becomes apparent that the decades-long mantra of each and every politician "we must encourage more goods to be transported by rail" was a stinking lie all the time. Compared to what DB used to be up to the 1990s, and especially before the 1980s, the state of DB can only be described as heavily damaged, partially destroyed. Destroyed also because of the many, many thousands of kilometers of tracks that have been dismantled since some time in the 1960s.