I removed all of my catalogs from Rapidshare because some schmucks were downloading them, burning the files to DVD and selling them to make a profit, with no credit to me, or benefit back to the MRR community who supplied the original catalogs in the first place.

PM sent.

Hi Stephen, I have the 1982 catalog, but not the others!

Plus I have quite a few others, some given to me by Cookee_nz. Do you want to swap?

In my library some catalogues.

Regards
Frits

You can say, my friend - no download possible ...

Thanks for sharing! I’ve been seeking out a lot of the Primex items over the last few years and looking through these older catalogs is a great way to see what was offered and how it was presented.

Hi Ben
IMO Primex was not inferior Märklin but rather simplified Märklin (but with exact same functionning and quality) and some Primex models were very very close to their Märklin cousins.
The cheaper track was very good for hidden tracks or ballasted ones, home signals could easily be retrofitted with lights.
Some models were only Primex-specific like the "Leigeinheit" 4596 (two covered cars, permanently coupled together) or the Berlin U-Bahn.
Cheers
Jean

Supermarkets yes, inferior no.

The strategy probably had something to do with the German market situation and commerce regulations: A serious "brand" company like Märklin was contractually not allowed to do business with anybody else than their traditional dealers - distributing quality products to disreputable "outsiders" like supermarkets was out of the question for the traditional family at Göppingen. But at the same time, they saw the money that could be made in supermarkets - and they didn't like that large share of the market disappearing in the greedy mouths of competitors like for instance Italian Lima. So they came up with Primex - and thus were able to tell their dealers that this was not "true" Märklin and not to be feared.

That description contains a lot of supposition. But the story as I understand it is not much better ...

My understanding of the situation was that a large department store wanted to sell Marklin, and Marklin refused to supply them, so they threatened to take Marklin to the courts for restraint of trade, or some such. So Marklin came up with the Primex range which is rebadged and renumbered Marklin and included a range of buildings and other accessories.

The buildings are (mostly?) supplied by Heljan, and some of these are unique to the Primex brand, at least I have not come across them elsewhere.

There are a number of trains which are unique to Primex, the Berlin U-Bahn already mentioned, the Zugspitz Bahn (which is a body variant of the U-Bahn) and a two axle Triebwagon and trailer are some that come to mind. Some of the tanker and boxcar liveries are also unique to Primex, along with a four (i think) part wagon set for Circus Sarrasani plus a variant of the 3029 loco also liveried for the circus.

The track was M-Track produced in a paler colour and without the ballast colour stippling of M-Track. The transformers were produced with orange plastic bodies, and the Marklin 7072 accessory controllers were produced in another colour (yellow?) instead of the Marklin blue. The track range was also only a subset of the full Marklin m-Track range.

The range slowly died a death and the reduced cost concept was continued on the Marklin HOBBY range that appeared at that time.

It is interesting to collect the catalogues and see the evolution of a product range that seemed to go through a time of popularity and then waned.

Marklin produced some extra items later on to keep the Primex brand registration, namely the 30031 Br24 in photo gray livery and 30055 Br23 as originally produced as a 3005, complete with separate bulb head lights but with a Delta decoder. I don't know if the law changed that they didn't need to keep making an item every five years to maintain the brand registration, or if they came to some arrangement with the competing Primex brand owner to keep the name for model railways.

Last year marklin produced an E44 and tin plate coach set under the Primex name to celebrate an anniversary of the Primex name, so it still lives on.

There do seem to be a reasonable number of non-catalog Primex items, i know I have some, like the sets of wagons advertising dental hygene and the cuckoo bahn line are a couple I can think of offhand. Another set is a variant of the tanker set you pictured but has a grey livery E44 instead of the blue and cream one you pictured.



I have one of these sets I can let you have for quite reasonable price, brand new unopened. Trouble is it is in the UK, but there are plans to come back to NZ around this time next year - if we can ever get back to the UK to begin with ...