This year on April 21 & 22, 2012 we have the SuperTrain show in Calgary, Alberta.

Jeff Stimson from Märklin USA will be there! You will find him at the HobbyTech booth.

Edited by user 13 September 2012 01:27:28(UTC)  | Reason: New date

Any pictures?

Ok. A Marklinist did eventually send some pix of the Calgary show but my computer is not operational now. Just posting with the IPod.
Next week will post a lot.

This weekend there is a model train show in Edmonton Alberta. It is held at the Mayfield convention center Saturday and Sunday (Sept 15 & 16) from 10 till 5.
Marklin will be well represented there. I will be volunteering with my dealer.
I will be manning the MyWorld table to get kids to play with electric trains while most of the show says hands off!
If you are in the neighborhood drop on by. There will be some Marklin and Trix there.

Does the Mayfield still have that awesome Sunday buffet??

Have a great show.

Robert.

Former Edmontonian who opted for +40 instead of - 40

Finally I found and uploaded the pictures from the show. However the photographer was not that skilled but I think that you will get the picture...

Last April we had the SuperTrain model train show in Calgary, Alberta.
The Calgary Eurorail Express (CEE) along with Hobby Tech Canada showed off a few things Marklin.



We had the push pull layout that has full scenery. We have a small train that shuttles back and forth with changing of signals and switches.




We had our 9m long high speed loop with R4&5 loops at the end which was great in showing off the ICE and TGV. Some members could assemble a very long train. We also put together some double headers. The star of the show was the rail zeppilin that someone converted from analog but did not set the top speed. At full throttle, she could fly off the R4 curves.



One of our members collects and runs the old Marklin O gauge.



Next show is on April 20 & 21, 2013

Edited by user 11 April 2013 12:32:46(UTC)  | Reason: Update title

Very good, Thanks for sharing the pictures.

April 20 & 21
For those that live or can get to Calgary in southern Alberta in western Canada,
SUPERTRAIN 2013 that weekend. It is arguably Canada's largest train show.

Marklin will be well represented there via Hobby Tech. Across the aisle will be three Marklin layouts, a fully scenic and automated push-pull layout, a vintage O-gauge layout and a my world layout that the kids, young and old can play with.

The my world layout will have 4 loops. 1 loop with a battery operated high speed passenger, one loop with battery operated freight train, and 2 loops running various Marklin digital start sets.

All are available for the public to run. This layout is my idea and when I first started it 2 years ago with a simple loop, a lot of people, young and old, had fun with it. Several people commented that despite the excellent show, this simple layout was the only one that could be played with.

In Edmonton last year we expanded the layout and moved it into the club layout show space and were at times mobbed. We even had a train show director helping out. We got honourable mention that this layout was an excellent introduction to the world of model trains. . The G scale group now has a small layout loop for the kids to play with too!

Kids playing with trains at a train show,..... What a novel idea......

The digital trains are all mine and are all from previous Marklin start sets, although I did upgrade the motor and put in a sound decoder in the ICE1.

I will take pictures and post them in a timely matter this time. Hope to see you at the show!

Mfx (Motorola used by Marklin) and DCC have the same primary power and base protocol or base language. Just that they are different dialects and hence do not understand each other. Fortunately the new multi protocol decoders can recognize the difference and use the dialect it was programmed to listen to. Just note that DCC is very loud and dominant but mfx allows conversation ( feedback).

Ok I will try to simplify.
In the early days of digital, there were a lot of individual and proprietary protocols. Fx by Motorola, Rocomaus, selectrix etc. had their own protocols and were not compatible with each other. North America saw this coming and has a couple of their own proprietary protocols too. Fortunately NMRA got organized and set up a committee to develop the open source DCC protocol. This is now a popular protocol as many smaller manufactures could now make digital loks (decoders).

One thing that everyone agreed to was a common power requirement. I think that it is DC with AC type digital signal superimposed to communicate and power the loks. ( I could have it backwards but it is not important, what is important is that they are the same among protocols for raw power. I can take the same two wire that power the Marklin 3rail and also run a 2rail with the same control.

Later ESU and others came along and offered controllers that are multi-protocol. They can communicate in DCC, fx, mfx, selectrix etc. so that the controllers can run several different brands of loks or more specifically, the different brands of decoders inside the loks. You always have the choice to set one or selected protocols for easier communications if you wish.

Now you can even get decoders that can also communicate in mult-protocols, but you pick the protocol at the time of programming.

Now to your specific question. The older Marklin digital start sets only offered fx controllers and you could only run fx loks with them. Your crude digital set is most likely fx only (DELTA). Later mfx controllers and decoders could also speak fx and work with each other. MS1 can do this. Now we have CS2 and MS2 that can handle fx, mfx AND DCC as well.

Any newer lok that has mfx will also work with the old fx, but you may have to program the mfx to one of the four addresses that were available with the old system. However a DCC only decoder will not work with the old fx or DELTA system. That being said, I did hear that some brand new decoders are multi-protocol and may recognize the protocol and self program the protocol, or at least allow you to pick. It cuts down on decoder inventory so that they don't have to build stock several protocols of inventory.

I may not be exact with all the descriptions but I hope you are less confused.