In Budingen, Germany. Visited the Mäser modeleisenbahn shop on Bahnhofstrasse. In their used section, I was attracted to mid-century West-Germany-manufactured Märklin tinplate cars, such as the 4000 and 4002. Bought a handful! I surprised myself by preferring, in a side-by-side comparison, the less detailed and a bit worn but — dare I say it, charming — tinplate over the much more detailed contemporary plastic versions.
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I can understand that. Mārklin Tinplate is wunderbahr! I especially like their hand painted Gauge One trains from the 1920’s and 30’s.
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Let’s see some pix of those cars ?!?!
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I was at the Sacramento Railroad Museum in the 1990s and the display showed a gauge 1 Tinplate Pacific class DR steam locomotive from Marklin built i believe in 1936. It was a gorgeous feast for the eyes!!
I believe it was Gauge 1 , not 0 gauge. It was very large and relatively realistic looking (scale length) compared to other Tinplate. Marklin has produced some beautiful stuff over the centuries.
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Here is a video of the 1960 Catalog.
See page 24.
Note that the 4000 coach was the “beginner” version.
Scale versions were also available, also with metal bodies.
Peter
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Thank you, Peter! The Lionel of West Germany I gather! I was a tank officer in the US Army in 1979-82 and am including on my new layout a “section” representing Ober Bayern where I was. I have a DB 103 and Epoch 4 coaches and the 1944 flat cars we used for our M60 tanks. I found 3D printed M60A1 HO tanks, too!
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Thank you Thomas; it’s four am here (
) and I’ll snap some shortly.
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The YouTube video resolution was such that I couldn’t make out the car catalog numbers so I’m not sure which ones were 4000 and 4002. Below are some pictures of the 1700 series which were available in the mid to late 1930’s, and, as near as I can determine, in the early post war period.
passenger car
sleeping car
diner
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Here’s a photo of the new (old) acquisitions. The one in a box is newer. The red DSG coaches have a thin line with metal tip coming from one end . . . (?)
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I had the three small green coaches like the ones in the middle of your photo. You can barely see one of mine in the layout photo above just to the right of Neuschwanstein.
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I see it! Looks like a fun layout!
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It was! I sold the trains when I moved. Most of the buildings were of my own design. All were cardstock and I enlarged the Canon Creative Park model of Neuschwanstein as far I could without creating odd gaps in the parts and turned it into a tunnel, which I also sold.
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I didn’t look really hard, but I don’t see it.
While doing some belated “research,” the other day, I discovered that the conductive wheel sets will short out a DC/DCC system. Non-conductive wheel set replacements for these old cars are essentially nonexistent. I think I’ll lay a small three-rail route for these cool cars and a small (used) epoch 2 or 3 Märkin loco. Alles ist klar!
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Javol! Ihre Modell-Eisenbahn muss in Betrieb sein! (Mein Deutsch ist sehr schlecht. Gott sei Dank für Google!)
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That’s not quite accurate to say that the conductive wheel sets will short out DC or DCC. Moreso, they short out two-rail systems. One could still use DC or DCC, but the outer two rails have to be negative and the inner rail/studs have to be positive (or vice-versa). An example in O:
This switcher runs on DC. The outer rails are negative, the inner rail is positive. This is reversed when I switch directions.
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Very interesting!
