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Take a downgraded restaurant car, make repair it and to requalify, look after interior decoration particularly, propose a gourmet's menu, call it «the Blue Show »and organize one day cruisings or one evening in Switzerland or the valley of the Rhine: the customers will flow. It is the bet tried and won by a young person and ambitious Franco-German company: TEAM Works.
To give again the taste of the voyage on the rail: such is the bet of TEAM Works, the young Franco-German company founded by Mulhousien Rene Bubendorf, which has just put its first restaurant car in circulation. Eleven years after his great voyage organized on board Nostalgia East-Express train, through Europe, China and Japan, this expert in marketing and restoration of railway hardware directs himself towards the railway cruising of short duration: the Bleu show will propose throughout this year of the voyages one day or one evening in Switzerland or the valley of the Rhine. The offer, gauged for groups of quarante-huit people, includes/understands a gastronomical meal on board, for an oscillating all-in price between 400 and 600 francs.
" If the public is receptive with our product, we will renovate in two years a complete train of five cars ", envisages Rene Bubendorf, who bets on the profitability of the project as from hundred days of circulation per annum. To reinforce the financial base of the company, it is on the point of opening its capital at a regional bank " a solid shareholding will facilitate future the investment ", affirms the leader, whom intends to acquire the four future cars to be restored either at the dB, or at the SNCF " It the country of origin of the hardware does not matter. What counts, it is its registration like restaurant car, because the requalification of an oar travellers would involve administrative complications ", warns Rene Bubendorf. The operation started at the beginning of 1999 on a stroke of luck: informed by Eisenbahnkurier, German specialized magazine, of the imminence of the auction sale of a car restoring by Deutsche Bahn, Rene Bubendorf gathers 600 000 francs and purchaser goes from there. The car, built in the Seventies and assigned to the trains intercity reached the age of the great revision. The dB decided to downgrade it " by error following a disagreement between the technical services and the commercial ones ", believes it its new owner.
TEAM Works the address in Badische Wagonreparatur, a railway workshop independent, approved UIC and established in the small German city of Rastatt, to ensure the revision under frame. Repairs are carried out using parts provided in standard exchange by the dB: the wheels are turned over to the direct workshop of Darmstadt, the bodies of shock, the brake and all the elements of the bogies are revised on the spot. After, if need be, a control with the ultrasounds and
a video tape recording. The only interventions on the bogies mobilize 250 000 francs in parts and labour.
TEAM Works obtains its referencing near the technical and commercial services of Deutsche Bahn.
The young company even manages to negotiate easy terms near the German conveyor.
The interior decoration of the car, which Marie brass and marquetry in the style Art Déco, is entrusted to craftsmen of the area and Belgium. To restore a felted environment on board, Rene Bubendorf puts himself in search of the weaving loom which was used to equip the East Express train. He ends up unearthing it in Scotland, in the collections of one impassioned of old railway hardware, and convinces his owner to give the installation goes from there to provide him 500 meters of a heavy printed velvet. After seven months of work and for 2 million francs, TEAM Works was offered a hardware combining the modern technique (air-conditioning, double glazing, electromagnetic brakes) to the heat of decorations of antan.
Remained to be made to circulate the Bleu show to satisfy the first customers, family groups and companies, ready to start a turnover estimated this year at two million francs.

" I knew the worst difficulties with the SNCF ", complains Rene Bubendorf. " the French regard me as a customer freight and make me pay consequently. The car weighs more than 50 tons! Vis-a-vis with the 5 000 francs required here for Belfort-Basle, the Federal Railroads modestly invoice me 138 francs per anybody for a circuit of 380 kilometers on their network ". Either of the kilometric expenses divided by three, with the guarantee to always reach in the passanger stations and not in the terminals of freight. **time-out** the inauguration of show Blue, envisage in December with museum of Railroad de fer in Mulhouse, himself be encounter à some difficulty of greeting and of routing from the station German of Freiburg, where TEAM Works have choose to station its hardware " One me ask once again 5 000 franc ", himself feel sorry for Rene Bubendorf, which himself be finally turn towards the station of Basle, where the CFF it have accomodate free, gain thus the preference of organizer vis-a-vis with a SNCF judge " administrative and rigid ". Push by the elected official Alsatian, the direction regional of SNCF promise to study again the request of Rene Bubendorf Too much late: the first cruisings organized in December circulated between Basle, Zurich and Bern. Equipped with the same bogies, bodies of shock and brakes that the German Intercity cars, the Bleu show is harnessed in the car of tail to all the types of hardware circulating on the broad outline of the CFF. In January and February, the weekends and for the Valentine Saint, several picturesque cruisings are envisaged between Basle and Interlaken. The program will continue in Germany, of the valley of the Rhine until the North of the country.
The marketing of cruisings is carried out for the moment of exclusiveness via the travel agencies in the Swiss conveyor " the customers flows by the simple play of the word of mouth ", is delighted Rene Bubendorl, who seeks to set up a partnership with French tour operators. TEAM Works already envisages to modulate its offer according to the desires of the customer: heads of French gourmet restaurants will replace, upon request, Schweizerische Speisewagen Gesellschalt (SSG) which currently ensures the services.
" a great name in kitchen would justify a rise of our tariffs and our margins ", ensures Rene Bubendorf, who in addition promises a great flexibility in the establishment of the routes. On request four days in advance, the Bleu show could circulate to him on any line of the networks Swiss and German.
While waiting for France, with modest Basle-Strasbourg and more ambitious Basle-Paris, than the contractor hopes to register with his catalogue.

Olivier MIRGUET LVDR of 19-01-00

TECHNICAL DATA
Type: 218.0

Bogies: Minden Deutz 36

Maximum speed: 200 km/h

Overall length: 27,50 meters

Weight: 50,5 tons