I feel real stupid asking this but I just got my first HO scale electric locomotive. It is the green CL E140 that is part of the 26511 set. I cannot figure out how to raise the pantographs. On my Z scale CL E151 you just push down gentley and it releases. On the E140 I have done everything and both pantographs are sill locked down. I am afraid of breaking or bending them.

I really like the 26511 set. The silver commuter cars look great with the green and black E140. I was very disappointed that the instructions say that you cannot use the E140 without the rest of the cars in the set. I doubt that I would have bought it if that little detail was disclosed in the catalog. I am surprised that Marklin would market a model like this. I thought about calling them and asking why the heck they put a standard coupler on one end of the engine if you can't run the engine without at least the control car attached to the other end. That would make a silly looking freight train. I guess it could be a practice train for 30 new engineers to get experiance running a train like in automobile drivers education schools.

Thanks Jack

I found the diagram in the booklet and did it and it works great. I think my fears were from taking the instruction manual to literally. It says the jumpers are for maintaince solo operation only. It also says that the loco cannot be ran without the cars. I think the problem could be that the booklet was written in German and then translated to the other languages. While i had the loco body off figured out the pantograms. I was too worried about breaking them and wasn't pushing hard enough.

Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it.