Ouch! Talk about strong views!

Come on guys, give them a chance! They've made wonderful stuff for years and they're trying to correct a couple of recent errors.

My worst fear is that they'll end up going bust and then there will be no more Marklin at all![:(!]

Sometimes you have to see the glass as half full!

Ray

I have the same kof. mine is ok. I've only had to clean and lube the gears. dust just gets into them without even running it! I was dissapointed that it is made in china, mostly because of the cost, and our sagging USA economy. I have lost my job because of trickle down from the auto industry. A lot of the auto parts are from china, and elsewhere. I know poeple who still work for suppliers, and they are told to ok faulty parts upon inspection! A lot of the repair parts I have bought that were imported have not lasted in my vehicles either! So I believe this could be an isolated case of zinc pest! It only takes a spec of contamination to begin,or one small air pocket.

Whats up Marklin? I can buy plastic roco or piko for a lot less!

I think Marklin should give us all refunds, or at least replacement models!

Merci beaucoup for the welcome.

Yesterday I inspected my Koef - it is 36805 and this "incriminated" Trostberg green thing but seems to be of a newer chassis type. (I remember there were round magnetos with the early types and then the long ones - me having the long. (The round only with the red BRAWA Koef..?.. I´m no Koef specialist..)


CE sign is cast-on ("hill"), Märklin sign is cast in ("valley"), and there are no bubbles and cracks - (..yet not? Still not..?.. I don´t know.)

I did not open to check for the type of decoder but maybe mine is of a "repair" charge or a newer one. Interestingly without any serial no. .. ..

THX again. YESS - give them a chance. But they should start to communicate well with their customers. Every car builder actually turns his problems in revocation procedures as a marketing strategy of proof for responsible behaviour - why not Maerklin?

If you own a crackeling one tiny little sweeet electronic loco - just give ´em a chance. Go to your dealer, he has to be your partner, make him send it to Goeppingen. And if this runs as the german guys report in the "Stummis Forum", it will be repaired with new parts and without any loud words - or you may eventually get a completely new one.

(..disclaimer - not my promise, but it happened more than once.)


Regards

Bernd AB

I can't help but reply to Romans post above. I know that unions have gotten greedy as time went on. I realise they can be stubborn entities. I have been on both sides of that fence.
Our union did not protect lazy non productive workers. What our company also knew was that that same type of labor structure (unionism) provided livable wages and a high standard of living we grew up with being called (middle class). Without that ECONOMIC INJECTION none of us would have been buying Marklin! Workers were paid well, they bought cars houses, televisions, refrigerators, GM Frigidaire washers, dryers ,ranges, ovens, and sometimes Marklin. The dollar got spent, and came back to the companies. This seems to be a concept no-one gives a crap about anymore. It was called supply and demand, and it is EXTINCT! Remember the German Economic Miracle? We need A USA one now!

Could be by me ... [}:)]
Welcome to the club, Bernd

john black, How Old is N.O.S.?, how old is it now?

just checked both my Lady C's - no bumps in the wrong places!

Hi all,

I agree with Mr Hoffmann,

Right now Marklin/Kingsbridge is not thinking about us, loyal customers. M* still will produce successes in the future, but expect be fewer than ever been. IMHO this period will be remember for a great number of misses. If Marklin is outsourcing from China, Hungary or Ubekistan [:o)], does not matter. Afterall M* is free to do so. The real matter is that Marklin/Kingsbridge does not care to maintain the standards for product excellence that once Marklin had. That costs money.

I had coined a new lingo for Marklin: MCC- Marklin Cut Corners and that is M* mantra of today. I was affected by one of M* recent blunders: My PBA inox cars made in China don't matte with correspondent german light accessories. I had M* know about this problem thru M* west coast rep. Let's see what happens (how long?).

If Marklin/Kingsbridge is betting in the prestige of M* brand to sell it to the highest bidder, they have a lot of homework to do...

Have all a nice weekend.

Ed

If Maerklin wants to survive they will have to install a well-fitting quality system for all their activites. At the end they will decide to pull back a lot of “outsourced” production as they will have to realize that it is extremely difficult (up to impossible) to get the expected quality by (potentially different and changing) chinese production shops.

These decisions are not new ones. Several car components manufacturers like Bosch partly had to revise their former decisions for “go east!”, for the same reasons.

“German Inflexibility”.. poohh..


..I sometimes found out that some Netherlands men are - sorry to say - a little bit inflexible. ;-) They insist on their Kopje Coffee and on some other strange habits, i.e. blocking german highways by their cars pulling camping trailers filled with netherlands food as it maybe impossible <don’t know..> for netherlands inhabitants to buy food in germany.
;-)

Call me an anarchist, a socialist, whatever you wish. I don't care. Hard working citizens losing good jobs, and homes of which they have 80% value equity to a wealthy bank is just plain wrong. Having to take a job for half the pay you earned before, and try to make ends meet is SLAVERY! I thought Abraham Lincoln took care of that.
NO, I am not African American, but the squeaky wheel gets the oil. I may just begin to SQUEAL!
Welcome to the rest of your life too!

Maybe it needs to go full circle. Our Dollar is falling fast, and hard. We may have to begin making things here again, or no one will be able to buy anything from abroad. Five years ago, one euro was about equal to $1.25. Today One Euro is like $.75. A Pound Sterling, worth double our dollar! Something is very wrong here! Taht is not GLOBALIZATION! That my friend is TIERANNY!

Maybe it is time for more "underground economies". I was told once by an old Italian American; If it weren't for a black market, we wouldn't have one at all! The way I see all the trade inbalnces today, the whole market looks very GREY!

1st excuse for some offtopic. The big management always is “flexible”. They get high wages and will jump into another company - not before they´ve got millions of “compensational fee” for being thrown out of the former comp. They drove the car drastically into the wall, then they got some 40++ x millions of dollars - enough to retire.

With the “working class” (the really working men, blue collars, simple white collars) it is another type of business, and I tend to say “Right!” to the “slavery” words.. but.. Since roman emperors times the slave masters were responsible to buy food and to give their slaves a bed under a roof. This changed. “Flexibility” is demanded..

Derived from the latin source the word “flexibility” means the chance to bend, bend one´s neck. To bend one´s will. To suppress people. “new words” - Orwell double speech? In the western economy the people are on the way to be reduced to simple consumers but nothing else. Decisions are made elsewhere, and the so called “representative democracy” represents everything but the living interests of the people. It represents the interests of the politicans who have to spent thousands or millions of dollars to get into their offices, and represent the interests of the industry and the lobbies like insurance companies or military equipment producing companies.

I am no communist nor socialist. I am a conservative thinking 51yrs old german engineer. If I would lose my job I maybe can stay in my house. My wife is a teacher - good so.. But losing a job being older than 40 normaly is a huge risk for a family man.

So lots of young people see this clearly - and decide not to live in a family because it is too risky to lose everything in case of losing the job.

Is this “new economy” ? “Flexibility”? Who will hug them when they get old? Or is this “flexibility” a new type of slavery, for the interests of “Business”..?..

.. now retiring to my E40 Maerklin loco reparation.. built 1960 or 1965, having the couplings bent (assume: fallen down.. Otherwise fine condition. Seems nice to pair to my beloved blue E10. Was a cheap deal on eBay - <35 EUR - and really NO! cracks caused by zinc corrosion..).

Better the couplings being bent than my neck..
;-)

Which is bent faster back to "right condition"?
E40 couplings. Ready. Fixed. Go.
:-)

I really hope that Maerklin will manage to survive, technically, financially, quality driven, innovation driven.. .. but I am a little bit suspicious especially with the "unpaid consult" of demanding "go China!" and "flexibility"..

PS Bernd , That E-10 sure sounds nice! Enjoy it. Ps also to scotland, My Sister has been to the British Isles. She Loved your public transportation. It is much better than ours here. Save your petrol money!

Well thats a completely different story about Mr. Kern form the last.
I would be good to have a reliable source for this info, I do not trust who ever is writing these stories, any more than the heads of corporate industries.

Before Marklin ever goes away, they will undoubtably cheapen the line-up. Unless technology allows for less exspensive production costs. It should. I was told that it does. Look at what a cathode ray television set costs today compared to 20 years ago. My 1996 Panasonic is still going strong. What do I need Hifgh definition LCD or Plasma technology at twice the cost? I am only giving a possible parallel. Lionel did this. All plastic bodies, then the move to China. This was after returning production to Michigan from Mexico. The issue is that even though they save money with labor, they never pass it on to us. If you look at the newer 3600 series hobby line of locos, they are metal, less exspensive models. No marker lights, or interior details though. I suppose a good modeler could retrofit, but that requires buying cheap Piko clones for the engineers cabs. So much for saving on cost. Lilliput is still around (owned by Bachmann). I don't know what the quality is like. I saw one example of a class 18 steamer. It wasn't bad for the price. I seem to remember the walkway along the boiler being warped and kind of loose. Not a Marklin trait at all! Roco does very nice work still. Fleischmann has new electric models with cardanic drive. Tower gears tend to be noisy, but they've made the top gear that meshes with the worm gear helical. This design reduces noise. Hopefully Roco will follow, and both brands remain on the scene.

"Will" cheapen ??? - M did it, already. You prefer plastic toothpick drive over metal gear precision

This topic was started to describe and explain what "Zinkpest" is and how it may be still occurring with recent models.

Whether or not Maerklin is sold again or not or its inherent problems should be discussed in appropriate forums for that subject mattter. Unfortunately for all of us, corporate politics has invaded the realm of the hobbyists.

Hello,

Christoph Schmantek (52), the Trix sales manager, who is leaving Marklin after 18 years will start working for the Haslberger Group (new owner of Roco and Fleischmann)in july.

Well, perhaps I should change my nick to Kassandra ?

I sgree lars. Design the quality in. Poeple have no time for leaving a car, for example at the dealer for days on end for re-call service caused by cheap inferior parts from "where ever".

Bernd, what is IMHO? Maybe, beacause of the small size of the kof, if it is dropped, it fractures likr this? Because the casting is rather thin due to it's scale? I'm no metalurgist, but doesn't volumexmass=density?

Uuuuuummmmm Thank's. I'm not braindead! Really!
I cleaned my Trostberg Kof and went to run it. It would not move. It was trying to. I discovered I had tightened the screws on the bottom (the small ones in front of both wheelsets) too tight. I backed them out some, and it runs fine. Just a tip in case anyone else experiences the same thing.

Mike, you might find this useful:
https://www.marklin-user...ault.aspx?g=posts&t=8803

You might also update your profile, still showing your age as 12!