And they would appreciate my find tonight at the hobby shop down in Indianapolis. A zip loc baggie of older, guessing 1960s or early 70's vintage trains that I scored for $30+tx. All the passenger cars and baggage/brake van are tinplate metal, the white box car and low side gondola are the only plastic cars. The engine is one of the older 0-8-0 with the manual trigger for the reverse unit sticking up thru the side tank on the diecast shell. The engine was totally frozen with hair wrapped around the gears and everything was very dirty. But some time in the shop freed up the engine which now runs like a fine swiss watch, and my Pledge polish and an old soft sock polished up the cars nicely. Now to souce some classic tinplate M track and a couple tinplate buildings to make up a very small layout to go under my little Christmas tree next holiday season. Our bay window is very shallow, but I think the 5120 tight radius curves will work perfectly. So I am going to try that. I used to model with Marklin HO, both with a portable layout for shows and a larger shelf layout before getting into British O gauge tinplate Bassett Lowke stuff in a big way. Now I can have some fun with Marklin again on a smaller scale. Model trains can be very affordable for those willing to do a little service work, which Marklin is very easy to service(much like Lionel was in the 1950s). It runs very well, all the drivers on older engines were spur geared to the motor, so no side rods wearing out. They even make plug and play functional overhead catenary for electric engines(which works very well, my portable layout had this on it). Mike
Silly NT's, I have Asperger's Syndrome
I do need a roof for one of the 4000 passenger cars if you have one laying around, a couple are also missing the springs that self center the couplers that I will need to source.
My first trainset was a Marklin. It ran great, especially, considering it was purchased in the late 50s. My father was an Air Force fighter pilot, so we moved around a lot. So, who knows where it ended up.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Lots of Marklin was sold thru the PX stores to GI's stationed in Germany in the post WWII years and onwards. I have serviced a few sets that were purchased that way thru the years for the families that had dug out dad's or grand dad's train set from the attic/closet and wanted to run it again after all these years. Just like Lionel of the same vintage, they run excellent once serviced and cleaned up.
When I lived in Massachusetts, I frequently attended a train show where a club has a rather large European layout in HO. There was a lot of Marklin equipment both running on their 3-rail and under wire. I always spent a good deal of time just watching and appreciating that display.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
This is a very interesting find, especially the locomotive. Growing up in Germany in the early sixties, I had a Maerklin train set with five locos. None of them had a manual reversing lever. To change direction, you sent a brief high-voltage impulse from the power supply (too short to get the motor to respond). However, I remember that this specific model was offered with automatic Telex couplers, where uncoupling was also triggered by a high-voltage spike; the couplers on your loco look indeed like Telex couplers. I always thought that in order to differentiate between reversing and uncoupling you had to give either one spike or two spikes in rapid sequence. Very interesting...
JW
I believe this is one of the very early model 3031 class 81 engines. It will reverse with the high voltage pulse like other Marklin engines will, but you can also flip the lever to change direction. Maybe the earlier transfomers lacked the high voltage pulse feature, that one is for the experts. I just bought it as it was a great deal and I once enjoyed a little vintage Marklin layout I built that even had working catenary. AC powered stud/3rd rail HO is the exception and not the rule in my area, so the shop was happy to make it go away to someone that will apprecate it and could get it running again.
Made a bit of progress on my little micro layout. Nothing is fastened down yet, Just test fitting as I need 2 more curved pieces to compete the loop. Catenary will be functional once I aquire a Marklin E lok to use it. Mike
emdmikeMade a bit of progress on my little micro layout.
I like it, it looks like fun,
-Kevin
Living the dream.
I am having a blast with it Kevin. I have a whopping $30 bucks invested in it. Who says model trains have to be expensive? Granted I have a whole lot more $$ invested in the vintage British tinplate layout under it and the Fn3 scale live steam Climax logging engine! The size of the layout is directly related to what will fit in the back of my little Jeep Wrangler. My old portable layout will not fit and is almost to heavy for one person to load with nothing on it, let alone trains and overhead catenary. This little set up is very light weight, the bottom is fully enclosed and removable to wire everything.