Eheim

The story starts in 1950, when a Mr. Fischer from Munich patented a steering mechanism for the trolleybus that he was developing together with one of his employees, Mr. Günther Eheim. The 2-axle trolleybus, which was modelled after a Büssing prototype and towed a 2-axle passengertrailer, was sold as 'EWF Trolley Bus' and 'Europa-Trolley-Bus' and has only been available for about 3 years. Mr. Fischers company, Europa Technische Spielwaren, went bankrupt in 1953 and everything that had to do with the trolleybus was turned over to Eheim, a company that was lead by that same Günther Eheim.

At first Eheim started selling a version of the Europa Büssing bus that was somewhat more detailed, but at the 1954 Nuremberg Toyfair Eheim showed a new version of the 2-axle trolleybus and an improved version of the passenger trailer. These first real Eheim buses were made from cellulose acetate (a kind of plastic that deformes easily). The success of this new trolleybus convinced Günther Eheim to build a 3-axle Henschel trolleybus in 1956. This model was more detailed, it even featured the Henschel star on the front. In the following years the number of available buses was extended further with an articulated Henschel trolleybus, which was also available as a non-trolley version for the Faller-AMS slotcar system.

Besides the trolleybus and other railroad accessories Mr. Eheim also developed waterpumps. In 1963 he decided to concentrate on aquarium equipment and sold the production of railway accessories to BraWa. BraWa continued to make the Eheim trolleybuses until 2001.

The models were also sold in startersets, the first sets came in a red box with a black-and-white drawing on top which changed to coloured drawings later on. Eheim used two different drawings, one for the 2-axle bus and one for the articulated bus but models were regularly packed in boxes that did not have the correct drawing on them. The starter sets were completed with 6 masts upto 1963, the newer sets always have 10 masts. When the articulated bus was produced for the Faller-AMS system Eheim introduced a starter set that contained Faller road segments.

Model	Prototype
2-axle trolleybus	Büssing
3-axle trolleybus	Henschel
Articulated trolleybus	Henschel
Articulated 'diesel' bus for Faller-AMS	Henschel
2-axle passenger trailer	?
1-axle luggage trailer	?

The ready-made 2-axle bus sold in several colours, always with a white top. The bus has been available in white, blue, green, yellow and red where the white bus had red trim and the yellow bus had a black trim. All others colours had white trim. The buses were also sold as kits, these did not have the trim printed on. The 2-axle passenger trailers always had the trim. The 3-axle bus and the 1-axle luggage trailer have been available in identical colours.

All models have an Eheim logo on the bottom, upto 1963 the logo was round, but when Eheim moved the trolley support mechanism to the inside of the bus in 1963 they had to make a new chassis which has a rectangular logo. Buses and trailers made by BraWa have a rectangular 'BraWa' logo except the 1-axle luggage trailer, this kept the Eheim logo until the end of production in 2001. Another detail which makes it easier to identify in which year a model was made are the headlights. At first the models had real bulbs as head lights which was changed around 1960 when Eheim also started to use light conductors for the headlights (For the taillights Eheim used light conductors from the beginning).

In the US Eheim models were imported and sold by Aristocraft and AHM, pictured below is a model in an Aristocraft box.