Buch "Einstieg in Märklin Digital"

This book has been advertised for some time, but only in German.

As an english (and german) speaker and as a user of a Märklin digital layout for the past 2 years, it seems to me that Märklin as a long established company, is suffering by trying to hold onto vital information needed by new users to digital. Märklin could easily provide all the contents of this book and other documents as a free pdf download given to any of their customers, and at the same time increase the take up of their digital systems. I doubt very much if their existing printed documents contribute significantly to their company profits, and many of them appear outdated or lack revisions.

I also doubt if their often stated goal of getting more young users to use their systems willhappen if they persist in limiting access to information vital to getting the best out of using their products. I've purchased a few of Märklin's digital accessories recently, and the enclosed multi lingual booklets all lack any kind of background descriptions of how the product could fit in with a developing digital railway. The english translation are laboured and turgid, and they assumes the user has a prior experience of digital rail systems. My experience with todays internet savvy, teenager who might be interested in developing a Märklin system, is that they would be deterred if all the practical knowledge necessary, lies only in the heads of a few adults, or needs the purchase of a book to read it. For them so much information today is and should be freely available online.

Imagine if Märklin produced and maintained an online repository which also permitted users like you or I to contribute to the translations of digital documents. No longer would we have to suffer poorly translated technical documents and all Märklin users would be assured better documentation. It's maintenance like many wiki based sites would be simpler than distributing paper based documents and would benefit by being more up to date. IF Märklin insisted on making money out of this, a simple subscription based service could be implemented, but why charge if all those interested were also buying more of the Märklin product line.

My rant requires a change of mindset by Märklin, difficult perhaps but not impossible. With many possible benefits, and little risk, as most of what is needed exists already in one format or other.

I wonder how long it will take to see Buch "Einstieg in Märklin Digital", translated, printed and delivered before I can find out how to use all the features of Märklin Digital?

There is now news sound decoder and i believe Märklin will put information about new decoders in the book.
Is that´s way it takes longer time?
But an E-book would be more interesting,so customer can been update about the latest news too.

Märklin will call it...latest review in the book,by add with the new generation decoder too.

Well, Piko, Roco, and Fleischmann provide their catalogues as free PDF files (not just the new items brochure). As do Faller.... /BDNZ
And as far as I'm concerned this pays for Piko - every year I flip through the pages and find some interesting items that are not in the latest new items brochure.


If someone wants to start a free English ebook about Märklin digital model rail road, here is a place where it could be written:
https://en.wikibooks.org.../Starting_A_New_Wikibook
There they write: "It has been said that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it [...]"

A book written by Märklin will concentrate on items that are currently available from Märklin.

A book written by the community can also cover discontinued items (the famous 6021) and products by other manufacturers (ECoS, Intellibox, Tams MC, ...).

I will not start such a book, but I'd be willing to contribute some pages if my limited knowledge fits and if the book is not just focussed on Märklin products.


There could be more than one book. Maybe we could start with an English CS2 manual, written for users by users, to get experience with wiki books.
Or start even smaller with an English MS2 manual, community-driven and more up-to-date than the official manual.


The recipe for free ebooks is much like the recipe for a Stone Soup.

A manual written by users for users will not infringe Märklin's copyrights.
It must not contain sections "guttenberged" (copied'n'pasted) from the Märklin manuals.

There should be no problems with screen shots of the CS2 taken by users for users.

Simply translating the Märklin book to English is "verboten". But I think we can do better than that.