Supporters initiate plea: continuation of the hit series

In the southwest of Germany, a beloved TV show named "Eisenbahn-Romantik" is facing an uncertain future. SWR, the broadcaster responsible for the show, announced that the editorial team will be dissolved by the end of the year, and no new episodes will be produced.

The cancellation has sparked a wave of protest, with thousands of people signing a petition to keep the show running on the Open Petition platform. The petition was initiated by railway enthusiast Ulrich Klumpp from Speyer.

The show, which initially started as a filler in the SWR program, became a hit series over the past ten years, achieving between 3.2 and 4.2 percent market share in SWR's broadcast area. Hagen von Ortloff, considered the inventor of "Eisenbahn-Romantik," remained the only face of the series.

The opening scene of each episode typically showed images of the vintage narrow-gauge locomotive of the Ochsenhausen-Warthausen museum railway in Oberschwaben. The jazz tune "Sentimental Journey" by Les Brown was featured at the beginning of each episode and during the end credits.

The cancellation is said to hit many people hard, especially in the southwest where railway tradition is deeply rooted. The AfD faction in the state parliament has criticized the decision, arguing that SWR should be committed to the whole country, including those who are enthusiastic about steam locomotives and history. The AfD faction believes that SWR is "coldly dropping" the show.

The AfD faction's concerns are shared by Hagen von Ortloff, the former moderator of "Eisenbahn-Romantik," who has appealed to the SWR to keep the editorial team intact. Klumpp hopes to meet with SWR director Kai Gniffke to discuss the continuation of the show.

Despite the low viewership in the past year, with the number of viewers at the lower end of the scale, the market share of "Eisenbahn-Romantik" nationwide was between 1.2 and 2.5 percent. The ARD media library and the YouTube channel "SWR Eisenbahn Romantik" have many individual episodes of the show available, with some videos having been viewed up to 1.6 million times.

As the debate continues, it remains to be seen whether "Eisenbahn-Romantik" will continue to roll on the tracks of German television or if it will come to a halt.