Minitrix - 18400 - Passenger Car, Mail Car, Epoch III - Deutsche Bundespost - 6079

Specific Item Information: German Federal Postal System (DBP) type Post 4mg-al/26 railroad mail car, in a bottle green version with the car route Stuttgart - Munich - Cologne - Deutzerfeld. The car looks as it did in 1963.

Road Name History: The Deutsche Bundespost (German federal post office) was a German state-run postal service and telecommunications business founded in 1947. It was initially the second largest federal employer during its time. After staff reductions in the 1980s, the staff was reduced to roughly 543,200 employees in 1985. The corporation was dissolved in 1995 under the first and second postal reforms that took place in the German Post Office. Following the reforms, the former Deutsche Bundespost was broken into three publicly traded corporations: Deutsche Post AG (German Post), Deutsche Telekom (German Telecom), and Deutsche Postbank AG (German Post Bank).

Brand/Importer Information: Trix is a German company that originally made Trix metal construction sets. one of its co-founders was Stephan Bing, the son of the pioneer toy-maker industrialist Ignaz Bing. In 1935 the company began producing the electrically powered model trains that it became famous for, under the Trix Express label. Prior to the outbreak of World War II the Trix company produced a small range of fairly unrealistic AC powered three rail models running at 14 volts.

N gauge models under the Minitrix brand were made from the late 1960s mostly of European prototypes (German and British primarily). North American prototypes were also manufactured and marketed under the Aurora "Postage Stamp" brand; later these items were sold under the American Tortoise, Model Power and Con-Cor brands. Trix sometimes utilized North American consultants to aid in the design of this portion of the product line. The "Hornby Minitrix' brand was used in the 1980s for a short lived range of British outline models using the earlier product tooling.

Trix's owner in the 1980s and 1990s was Mangold, which went bankrupt in the late 1990s and Märklin purchased the assets in January 1997. In part, this purchase was a reflection of Märklin's need for added production capacity; Trix had been manufacturing certain items for Märklin in previous years. The purchase was also in response to the earlier purchase of the Karl Arnold company by the Italian company Rivarossi; Märklin were very keen to take over Trix market share in 2-rail H0 and especially Minitrix, until then Märklin had not marketed N gauge models. In 2003, Märklin introduced its first N gauge models under the well established Minitrix brand. A number Märklin H0 scale three-rail AC locomotives have also been introduced in two-rail DC versions under the Trix logo and many models are shared between the two brands.

From Wikipedia