Art. H22200
Hobbytrain Touropa Set 1 4 pcs. DB, Ep.IIIb – new design

2x Bcm 53 with apron
2x Bcm 53/60 with preferred compartment and apron

Increasing competition from air and road transport forced the long-established travel companies such as Touropa and Scharnow to improve their services as early as the end of the 1950s. The first step was taken by DB, as the owner of the couchette coaches, at Touropa’s insistence, and it installed four preferential compartments in each of the couchette coaches delivered in 1953 and 1954. In 1963, the first UIC-X couchette coaches of type Bc4üm-62 (later Bcm 243) came onto the rails. The new couchette coaches only had 10 compartments and one bellboy compartment.

From 1967, new 27.5 m long coaches with special compartments (Bctm 256) were added and for the last time the company names of the major tour operators were emblazoned on these coaches. After the merger of various travel companies to form TUI (Touristik Union International) in 1969, the lettering disappeared at the beginning of the seventies. Some vacation trains continued to run well into the eighties with partially modernized coaches of types Bcm 246 and Bctm 257.