My experience with Marklin's quality control is not very good. I believe that buying a brand new Marklin loco without the assistance of a retailer that offers work/repairs under warranty is a bit of a gamble, more so than with 2 rail companies.

I don't like buying new locos by mail. If something goes wrong - and it often does - I would end up at best being without the loco for months and at worse having to bite the bullet and live with a loco that has problems or throw it away .

Two years is a good warranty - not too many companies offer that here in Canada - but you need to be able to take advantage of it in a practical manner. For me, this means repairs done fast - say one to two weeks - not 3 - 4 months plus the shipping costs. I have had two purchases within the last two years that have needed major warranty work - one is the 36243 steamer bought a few months ago that has needed a new motor (installed under warranty by Mike here ) and just now my 30000 is behaving like an analogue loco: when I put it on the track it takes off like a bat out of hell - I think the decoder is fried. Hopefully Mike will be able to put in a new decoder under warranty (it just happened, I have not yet taken it to him to fix).

If Marklin does care about its retailers - those that offer both sales and technical assistance - this is a good thing and makes customers happy and happy customers keep on buying their products. (Now if only they would add to the top speed of the locos.... )

Hornby tries to do without such retailers as much as possible and for me this means that I can't buy a brand new loco from them. Also, their shipping fees need to be reviewed for those of us who do not live in the UK. There was a Pendolono that at one point I wanted to buy from Hornby, but after a bad experience with them I decided against it and did not renew my membership.

Finally: how is it possible that Walthers can make decent hobby-level locos - DC - for less than CAD$100.00 (and even much less on a good sale from them) and Marklin can't? These are good economical locos that run nicely. That is a market that Marklin needs to take another look at.

My usual 2 cents' worth.

Have a great weekend everyone.

He came from the event company of Würth (Marbet). He was the right person to hire a singer for the IMA at Göppingen, but technical details of locomotives (three-pole or five-pole motor) probably were not his area of expertise.
I don't know whether he did a good job - he was a manager, not a technician. I'm afraid cost reduction was more important than technical excellence.

Marbet had sales of €52M in 2007. Würth had sales of €11050M in 2015. Märklin had about €98M.
I think you cannot hire a Würth manager for Märklin - those companies play in different leagues.

Thanks for the info Tom. Well you don't seem to think too highly of him!

At least he left a good impression with me. I don't think Märklin needs to have a technical person as CEO. I guess there is plenty of technical skill at Märklin as it is.
But he seemed to know in which direction he wanted the company to head and in the interviews he gave, he seemed to have a sincere commitment to his work and an understanding of the company.

/Torbjörn

He made a good impression on me. It seems he wanted to target the US market and left as the Siebers had different plans. And now that he is gone, Florian Sieber tells us that total sales went down, but US sales went up by 50%.

Reading "former Würth manager" makes it look as if he came from a big, technical company. But he came from a rather small and non-technical company.

Managers let others do the investigation and preparation and make the final decision. It cannot harm if they know the product and the steady customers.

For sustained development a company must avoid making steady customers unhappy.
And as far as I can tell from comments on MRR fora Märklin made several steady customers unhappy in the past few years - before Löbich, under Löbich, after Löbich.

Buying analogue Märklin locos on eBay and new ESU decoders leads to affordable locos. Some skip the decoder and stick to analogue operation.


I think Märklin intend to stick to making mainly one-time series. Fewer new constructions in one year (not two new steamers competing for buyers), fewer livery variations of new moulds.
I think this will lead to higher profits, but lower sales.

...please allow me to share a fact with you : If Märklin had not dropped ''analog/analogue'', they would have earned 30.000 Euros more from Istanbul.... But I must thank them for directing me to the second hand paradise market.... Otherwise I would not have managed to force the limits of 450 locos.... Thank you Märklin....

Hi Mehmet,

In December 2008 I actually sold the old analogue locomotives I had played with as a child because I only wanted digital, but only a few months later, I started collecting near-mint vintage items, initially because I liked Märklin's Nohab/AFB diesels and wanted the older analogue versions as well. Once I got started, I started buying other vintage models as well as some passenger cars. Gradually, I came to like them more and more and my analogue collection expanded whereas the number of digital locomotives in my possession kept on shrinking through Ebay sales. The numerous warranty cases that Märklin customers have to face nowadays also tilted the balance in favour of older products made in Germany for me, though I wouldn't thank them for that.

Vintage is enjoying a little renaissance right now, but Märklin won't make any money with that.

Best regards,

Mark

Edited by user 18 June 2016 20:54:27(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Mehmet,

You've hit the nail on the head there. Even true Märklin fans like you and me now think that they don't care much about their customers. If they did, they'd have effective quality control and products that work reliably every day of the year. Ironically, those who buy older models second-hand can still get Märklin products with those attributes ...

I'm not against digital as long as it works and I still buy a few new locomotives (and car sets) every year, but I often need to return items with small defects ... Märklin does not need to make new analogue locomotives for me, but they should really care about customer satisfaction because the company has only been able to survive thanks to the digital users who buy today's products.

Best regards,
Mark

Wow. Long thread. It seems that some kind of misunderstanding persist, despite several writers trying to clear it up;

The current digital locomotives operate perfectly in analogue environment!
The decoder senses the track power and "emulate" a reversing relay. This is done automagically without the user having to do anything.
As the decoder is cheaper than a standard reversing unit, these new digital locos are also the cheapest possible loco for analogue operation.

Those are the good sides.
But to me, -who still use classic analogue, there are still downsides, compared to "real" genuine analogue locos from past glory;

If something breaks down electronically, I am not able to fix it. With the classic motor layout and old-school reversing releay I can always repair a loco myself.
Some new digital locos come with sound, and those are somewhat more expensive than a basic loco able to do analogue operation.
Digital locos working in analogue environment tend to run much slower than genuine analogue locos. (Meaning that I have had to slow all genuine analogue locos down, installing pairs of anti-parallel diodes in series with the motor)
Digital locos are completely incompatible with the Märklin 6600 and 6699 control units. Actually the digital components can/will fry if exposed!
Some digital decoders are in danger when using the 24V reverse-impulse with older-than-white analogue trafos.
Problem with direction of travel with some older digital locos; when left for a longer time, they will go back to run in their "default" direction of travel. This especially causes havoc in shadow-stations... (Problem is not limited to analog operation)

As long as M keeps their electronics "compatible" with analogue operation, I have no problem with them. My problem is the price-tag they put on new models. That keeps me in the second-hand market, which I am happy to say is working quite well. :-)

As I mentioned above, If decoders are so cheap, then make only one that can do all operations and the customer can then have their supplier program in what they want. [ like the hearing aids]. Marklin then can make thousands of decoders and offer them out to their agents. If that are so cheap, why not include a spare with each loc, or supply a few free ones to their agents so they don't have too much money in stock, and can then service problems quicker ans easier. If they are all made plug and play, then that would make changes even better. I hope they [ Marklin ] are looking at this thread.
Dereck