AKN Eisenbahn GmbH

In 1879, HK Notnagel & Co. of Altona, a lessee of Himmelmoor, located in Quickborn, where peat was mined for heating, called for the construction of a railway for the transport of peat. The municipalities of Quickborn and Kaltenkirchen and the then independent town of Altona supported this project. After the founding of the Altona-Kaltenkirchner Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (Altona-Kaltenkirchen Railway Company, AKE) in 1883 and an expression of support from the Emperor on 27 April 1883, the construction of the new railway had already started in the autumn of 1883. On 8 September 1884, passenger traffic commenced on the line from Gählerplatz in Altona to Kaltenkirchen and on 24 November of the same year the carriage of freight traffic commenced. The shares were subscribed by the town of Altona, the communities of Quickborn, Ulzburg and Kaltenkirchen and the construction company Kintzel & Lauser. On May 21, 1913, the company as remained Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft Altona-Kaltenkirchen-Neumünster.

Since 1981, the AKN has also operated the Alster Northern Railway (Alsternordbahn, ANB) and the Elmshorn-Barmstedt-Oldesloe railway (EBOE). The AKN had managed the ANB since 1953 and the EBOE since 1957. The Alster Northern Railway was sold to the Verkehrsgesellschaft Norderstedt (Norderstedt transport company), a subsidiary of the Norderstedt municipal utility, in 1992, but operations have continued to be carried out by the AKN.

Currently, 50 percent of the shares are held by the city of Hamburg and 49.89 percent are held by the State of Schleswig-Holstein. The remaining 0.11 percent of shares are held by private individuals.

The original route of the AKN was the Hamburg-Altona–Neumünster railway. Since 1965 AKN has been part of the Hamburger Verkehrsverbund (Hamburg Transport Association, HVV). In the Hamburg rapid transit network, AKN lines are marked with an orange A, sharing the map with the U-Bahn lines (U), S-Bahn lines (S) and Regionalbahn services (R). However, other colours are used to route plans that show only the AKN lines: red for the A1, green for the A2 and dark blue for the A3.

The fares of the HVV apply on almost the entire AKN route network (as far as Boostedt since 2002) otherwise, Schleswig-Holstein fares apply.

As part of the railway reform in the mid-1990s, the AKN successfully tendered to operate on some other routes, some of which were previously operated by Deutsche Bahn.

Since 15 December 2002, the Nordbahn Eisenbahngesellschaft, a subsidiary of AKN Eisenbahn and the Hamburger Hochbahn has operated services from Neumünster to Bad Segeberg on the reactivated Neumünster–Bad Oldesloe railway (HVV line R 82).