K.Bay.Sts.B. (Royal Bavarian State Railroad)

Company History: The Royal Bavarian State Railways (Königliche Bayerische Staats-Eisenbahnen or K.Bay.Sts.B.) was founded in 1844. The organisation grew into the second largest of the German state railways (after that of the Prussian state railways) with a railway network of 8,526 kilometres (including the Palatinate Railway or Pfalzbahn) by the end of the First World War.

Following the abdication of the Bavarian monarchy at the end of the First World War, the 'Royal' title was dropped and on 24 April 1920 the Bavarian State Railway (Bayerische Staatseisenbahn), as it was now called, was merged into the newly formed German Reich Railways Authority (Deutsche Reichseisenbahnen) as the Bavarian Group Administration (Gruppenverwaltung Bayern). The management of the Bavarian railway network was divided into four Reichsbahn divisions: Augsburg, Munich, Nuremberg and Regensburg. The former Palatinate Railway formed the Ludwigshafen division. On 1 October 1933 the only group administration within the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft, the Gruppenverwaltung Bayern, was disbanded.

Successor/Parent History: The Deutsche Reichsbahn, also known as the German Reich Railway or the German Imperial Railway, was the name of the German national railway created from the railways of the individual states of the German Empire following the end of World War I.

The company was founded in 1920 as the Deutsche Reichseisenbahnen when the Weimar Republic, formally known as Deutsches Reich (German Reich, hence the usage of the Reich in the name of the railway), took national control of the German railways, which had previously been run by the German states. In 1924 it was reorganised under the aegis of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG), a nominally private railway company, which was 100% owned by the German state. In 1937 the railway was reorganised again as a state authority and given the name Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRB). After the Anschluss in 1938 the DR also took over the Bundesbahn Osterreich (BBO, Federal Railway of Austria).

The East and West German states were founded in 1949. East Germany took over the control of the DR on its territory and continued to use the traditional name Deutsche Reichsbahn, while the railway in West Germany became the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB, German Federal Railway). The Austrian Osterreichische Bundesbahnen (OBB, Austrian Federal Railways) was founded in 1945, and was given its present name in 1947.

In January 1994, following the German union, the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn merged with the West German Deutsche Bundesbahn to form Germany's new national carrier, Deutsche Bahn AG, technically no longer a government agency but still a 100% state-owned joint stock company.

Brief History: Germany is a Western European country with a landscape of forests, rivers, mountain ranges and North Sea beaches. It has over 2 millennia of history. Berlin, its capital, is home to art and nightlife scenes, the Brandenburg Gate and many sites relating to WWII. Munich is known for its Oktoberfest and beer halls, including the 16th-century Hofbräuhaus. Frankfurt, with its skyscrapers, houses the European Central Bank.