Things are looking up:
currency reform in Germany The employees initially had to bear the brunt of the 1948 currency reform themselves. All employees started over again with a fraction of their former assets and the amount of EUR 20.45 (DEM 40) that was paid to each German citizen.
The Rheinbahn’s social welfare network helped out again when the currency reform was introduced: 842 applications made by employees with special plights were approved. 84.569 Reichsmarks were paid out by the Rheinbahn up until the currency reform. It also paid marriage allowances of RM 11.700 and birth allowances of RM 6.500. A total of 899 items of clothing were distributed to employees up until the currency reform, as well as underwear, working clothes, woollen blankets, towels, socks, bicycle blankets, inner tubes and lamps, ovens, heaters, furniture, razor blades, shoe polish, toothpaste and toothbrushes, shoelaces and thermos flasks.
When the stable currency became legal tender, life in Duesseldorf began to return to normal. The weekly newsreels contained reports about Duesseldorf as a city of fashion and art, and showed smartly-dressed models floating down the Koenigsallee, trams travelling through the city and the trees on Koenigsallee in blossom. Optimism was in the air. In the same year, the restaurant car for the K Line was rolled out of the repair shop in Heerdt again.
It was this optimism that kept the employees from giving way to despair, despite the overwhelming burden of work and problems that they faced, and it is this optimism that enabled the return to service of this "luxury car". The event was so significant that the Nordwestdeutsche Rundfunk broadcasting corporation sent its famous reporter, Werner Labriga, to cover it in Duesseldorf. The Rheinbahn specifically emphasised that this coach was not only for "the upper classes". This is why, on its first symbolic journey, it was filled with members of the works council and company employees.