Description

Touropa Set 1 consisting of: 2x couchette cars Bc4m with apron and 2x couchette cars Bc4m with preferential compartment and apron.

Increasing competition from air and road transport forced long-established travel companies like Touropa and Scharnow to improve their services as early as the end of the 1950s. The DB, as the owner of the couchette cars, took the first step at the urging of Touropa, installing four preferential compartments in each of the couchette cars delivered in 1953 and 1954. In 1963, the first UIC-X couchette cars of the Bc4m-62 (later Bcm 243) type entered service. The new couchette cars had only 10 compartments and a bellboy compartment.
Starting in 1967, new 27.5 m long carriages with preferential compartments (Bctm 256) were added, and for the last time, the company names of the major tour operators appeared on these carriages. After the merger of various travel companies to form TUI (Touristik Union International) in 1969, the lettering disappeared in the early 1970s. Some holiday trains continued to run well into the 1980s, partially with further modernized Bcm 246 and Bctm 257 carriages.

All cars feature interior lighting with a power storage system for constant illumination. One car per train has working red taillights. On the Touropa train, this is car Bc4m 17 757 from set H22201.