>>1274577>The "s" is for "schnell"I was under the impression that it actually stood for "Stadt", as in a city railway, much like how a number of German (as well as Austrian and Swiss) cities have a section of line actually referred to as a "Stadtbahn".
For example, the elevated section of line in Berlin between Berlin Zoologischer Garten and Berlin Lichtenberg is called the Stadtbahn, as it is an inner-city railway.
The main reason why "Stadtbahn" was not used as a name was because regional trains were called "RB - Regionalbahn" or "RE - Regional Express". So, Stadtbahn was just shortened to "S-Bahn". When the West German cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bielefeld, Frankfurt and I think somewhere else, started their pre-metro systems, the term "Stadtbahn" was recycled. Since no one called "S-Bahn" Stadtbahn anymore, it just made sense to reuse it.
I have heard people in Berlin and the surrounding area call the S-Bahn the "Stadtbahn", but sometimes it's specific to the more metro like lines in the inner-city, and sometimes it's generalised.
