Germany has the largest railway network in all of Europe. But they are outdated and overcrowded, causing trains to be frequently delayed and cancelled. Even he himself sneered at the unpunctuality of Deutsche Bahn, the country's main railway carrier. But the German authorities are not amused: the transport minister believes that the state of the railways poses a threat to democracy because citizens are losing faith in the state’s ability to solve problems. In the coming years, the German government is ready to spend more than 100 billion euros on large-scale modernization of the railway infrastructure. The Financial Times looks at why Germany's railways have fallen into such disrepair and how they are trying to fix them.