Eisenbahn Kurier
Encyclopedia
Eisenbahn Kurier or EK is a monthly magazine published in Freiburg, Germany, whose focus is on railway and model railway themes. Its target audience is railway modellers and model railway fans as well as railway experts and employees. With a monthly print run of about 40,000 copies, EK is one of the biggest railway magazines in Germany. The magazine is produced by its own publisher, EK Verlag, which is registered in the Freiburg Trade Register. Its manager is Dierk Lawrenz, Handeloh.

History

Eisenbahn Kurier was founded in 1966 in Wuppertal
Wuppertal
Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...

 by a small group of railway fans, which included the famous locomotive photographer Carl Bellingrodt. Its declared aim was to publish a magazine in which information about the remaining, operational Deutsche Bundesbahn
Deutsche Bundesbahn
The Deutsche Bundesbahn or DB was formed as the state railway of the newly established Federal Republic of Germany on September 7, 1949 as a successor of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft '...

 steam locomotives was reported. Whilst there were already several hobby magazines at that time which had a railway theme, there were few up to date reports on the prototype or they were only cursorily mentioned. Today EK still has a heavy emphasis on current railway events. Bellingrodt later bequeathed a large part of his photographic archive to EK, which still publishes them on a regular basis today.

EK attracted further attention in 1972 when it purchased an operational steam locomotive, number 24 009
DRG Class 24
The DRG Class 24 steam engines were German standard locomotives built for the Deutsche Reichsbahn between 1928 and 1939 to haul passenger trains.-History:...

 from East Germany, which became the foundation for the activities of the company "directly on the tracks". The oldest still operational dining car
Dining car
A dining car or restaurant carriage , also diner, is a railroad passenger car that serves meals in the manner of a full-service, sit-down restaurant....

 in Germany (1700D) and the Prussian crown prince's coach are amongst its other purchases.

In 1981 the magazine began covering the subject of railway modelling in the magazine, which now appeared monthly. In 1976 the first specialist and photo books were published by EK Verlag. When EK first covered model railway topics they were very much a peripheral theme, but over the course of the year they have increasingly taken more and more space in the magazine.

From 1990 to 1994 a slightly different parallel edition of EK was produced specially for the new German federal states from the old East Germany. Its content varied little from the western edition, but it was cheaper. Following the founding of Deutsche Bahn AG, this concept was dropped.

Since 1966 many railway books have been published by Eisenbahn Kurier alongside the magazine, including books on individual German locomotive classes. In addition there are also picture series and books on regional railway subjects in their range of publications, as well as DVDs, videos and numerous special magazine editions on historic and current railway topics in the Eisenbahn Kurier Special, EK Themen and EK Aspekte series. Besides Eisenbahn Kurier the EK Verlag also publishes the Modellbahn Kurier magazine (purely for modellers) as well as Stadtverkehr (on city services like trams and buses).

External links

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