The story
The town of Erfurt operated an industrial railway, the Städtische Industriebahn (Municipal industrial railway), which commenced service on 8 May 1912. Even during the period of East Germany, the company remained independent because it was organised as a municipal institution (Städtischer Eigenbetrieb). After the reunification of Germany, the town tried to secure the railway service and founded on 1 May 1990 a GmbH, the Erfurter Industriebahn (EIB), with all capital shares held by Erfurt. On 20 September 1995, the company became the first municipal enterprise in East Germany to be recognized as an "öffentliche nichtbundeseigene Eisenbahn" (public non-federal railway). As the transport of goods alone seemed to have no future perspective, the company tried to enter regional passenger transport in Thuringia, a privilege that was granted on 10 April 1997. On 15 September that year, a contract was signed by the state of Thuringia and the EIB. The new focus was reflected in a new name, "Erfurter Bahn", on 3 March 2007. Erfurter Bahn is a subsidiary of the Erfurt city council. The trains used for passenger transport are the Regio-Shuttle RS1 and the Bombardier Itino.
In 1999 the EIB founded, together with the Hessische Landesbahn, the subsidiary Süd-Thüringen-Bahn (STB) directed from Meiningen, which carries regional traffic in southern Thuringia, while only the connections Erfurt–Würzburg and Erfurt–Meiningen are operated by the federal Deutsche Bahn. After years of developing new rules and guidelines, the Federal Railway Authority (Eisenbahn-Bundesamt) granted on 24 January 2014 a permission to the Regio-Shuttle-Triebwagen (Regional Shuttle Railcar) of the Erfurter Bahn to run on steep tracks, without remodeling. The track Bahnstrecke Plaue–Themar can thus be served, and the track Bahnstrecke Suhl–Schleusingen upon reopening.
Erfurter Bahn and Süd-Thüringen-Bahn employed in 2014 around 440 people. The railway designed a special train celebrating 1000 Jahre Leipzig in 2015, the celebration of the first documentation of the city.
From Wikipedia’s article on Erfurter Bahn, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4