Many of us seem to enjoy the slightly unusual aspects of Marklin, not necessarily topics about a particular item, era, operation etc, but more along the lines of Trivia, Minutiae, "did you know" and all that kind of thing.

So here's my new topic which I hope might run for a while and we can also learn from.

What do you know, or have discovered by chance, relating to some aspect of Marklin (anything at all) that you would not have known had you not been reading a catalogue in detail, or perhaps from comparing one catalogue against another and getting that 'eureka' moment??

I'm particularly encouraging information, of a general nature but which is unique, or only found in one catalogue. I'm not really thinking of topics which might describe in detail some new item issue for that year only, I consider that to be product-specific rather than across a range or other aspect of the hobby.

One aspect might be something most of us take for granted, perhaps been in the catalogue for years but around which there is another bit of info maybe previously overlooked.

Let me give an example of what I mean;

Marklin 7199 Oil - 1966/67 catalogue page 69 states...

"containing about 10 c.c. of winter grade motorcar engine oil for lubricating locomotives and rolling stock"

When I first read that some years back I thought "Well, I did not know that".

Ok it was not earth-shattering, but it is interesting, or at least to me. Should I find myself needing specifically some equivalent oil and I'm all-out then a quick trip up to the garage, pop the bonnet of the mighty Mazda or Honda, whip out the dipstick and assuming the oil is not burnt and dirty, what I could wipe off my dipstick would probably keep my models lubricated for several months!! (Ok, I'm re-reading that, and no innuendo is intended!!!!!)

And I will point out (before someone else does) that this little detail is specified in several catalogues, not just the 66/67 year, that just happened to be the first one where I consciously noted it.

I have a few others but I'm sure all of us have something we know from reading a catalogue that we've often wondered if others have seen it?

Bring it on, surprise us with your trivia.

Enjoy

Cookee

I suspect they are not the same as today's motor oils, which have a lot of additives for cleaning, reducing pollutants, longevity, etc etc. I think I would be very wary about putting any motor oil on my engines today not least because of the plastic parts which almost certainly come into contact with it . Also a lot of new oils are synthetics - no idea what effect these would have, and I for one am not going to try any just to find out
Rgds charles

Hi Steve,
The other side of the coin perhaps, is to have information that was NOT included in a catalogue.

Such as a wagon or other article that does not conform to the catalogue offering.
Is that a valid perspective on your interest, or a different topic altogether?

regards
Kimball

Hi Kimball,

It does kind of seem to be a different topic, do you mean an item that was produced but differed noticeably in some way from what was in the catalogue?

Probably need an example.

Cheers

Steve

Hi Kimball, I would suggest that might be considered a mis-print?, there have been examples quoted here in the past, I think Steventrain had a few as well.

Personally I'd quite enjoy a "mis-prints" topic, probably again under collectors corner would seem most suitable and it only needs someone to start it off with an example.

The only distinction I'd want to see would be to separate those examples which are actually documented in Koll's etc **, against those where say part of the printing has been cut off, or missed altogether, perhaps the painting machine malfunctioned and one side was not painted and it was completely missed in QC. Or perhaps where one 'layer' of painting missed a particular colour and the entire image was altered.

** The classic 3000 had a small number circulated in the early-mid 70's which were mis-printed with the number upside down to read 90068 rather than 89006 as should be)

Some of those examples could potentially be very collectible but you'd want them to be where it would be extremely difficult to fake them for obvious reasons.

I think the examples Koll's favour are those where several were released all with the same mis-print until it was caught and corrected. Not unlike stamp or coin mis-prints.

What do you think?

Any other members have examples of mis-prints (Fehldruck, Druckfehler etc) that they would like to contribute to a new topic? (probably check there is not an existing topic that could be added to rather than start a new one)

Cheers

Cookee