Minitrix - 11200083 - Mixed Freight Consist, Europe, Epoch V - NIAG - "Freight Train" Starter Set

Specific Item Information: Niederrheinische Verkehrsbetriebe AG (NIAG) (Lower Rhine Transportation Company) diesel locomotive No. 6, B-B wheel arrangement, built starting in 1988, 2 gondolas with hinged roof hatches.

Road Name History: Niederrheinische Verkehrsbetriebe AG (NIAG) is a modern, multimodal transport and mobility service provider with around 800 employees. Our group of companies creates connections for the region and beyond in the two core business areas of local public transport and logistics.

With our public transport offers, we move the people on the lower Lower Rhine, bring them safely to school, to work, to go shopping and to friends and relatives. Thanks to our bus line network with more than 2,200 kilometers and 36.5 million passengers a year, NIAG is the largest provider of bus-based public transport on the lower Lower Rhine. Added to this are our mobility offers such as car-sharing, transport-on-demand, etc

With our railway and our Rhine port, we ensure the transport and handling of bulk goods for the economy - and at the same time link two high-performance modes of transport that ideally complement each other in logistics. Our services - wagon and vehicle workshop, logistics management - help to keep supply chains continuously stable.

NIAG is integrated into the corporate structure of the Rethmann Group as a public-private partnership.

Our group of companies, whose roots go back to 1909, works as a public-private partnership: 49 percent are held by the districts and cities involved (43 percent Wesel district, 3 percent Kleve district, 1.26 percent Duisburg city, 1.11 percent City of Wesel, 0.63 percent City of Moers), 51 percent of the shares are held by Rhenus SE & Co. KG. Today we employ people in more than 70 professions.

Brand/Importer Information: Trix is a German company that originally made Trix metal construction sets.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