Originally Posted by: analogmike 
in my collection i have the old "e18" lok, marklin ac in the hamo box. i often wondered why it was in the wrong box. i don't have the box number off hand. the artwork on the box shows green livery but the lok is blue. i'm wondering now if the green ones were the marklin-marklin and the blue ones were the hamo-box-marklin-ac versions and how does it affect the value of the model?? mike
Hello Mike and Ray,
Thank you for raising these points, I have long been pondering about HAMO / Märklin, particularly in regard to my old blue E18.
About 30 years ago a dear friend (who has long since gone to the big layout in the sky) sold me a number of old Märklin locos, including an E18 and an E44
As Mike has noted with his, my E18 is blue and is a 3023.
I have since renewed the pantographs (but kept the originals) and changed the loco to digital.
I also have an image of the actual prototype E1835, made 1952 :
It came, like Mike’s, in box marked HAMO but the box features a green E18.
The end of the box number has a sticker featuring the number 3024(green version) but you can make out under this the number 3023(blue version) on the original box.
The instruction leaflet (which to my great distress has been chewed by my dog) notes HAMO of Nuremberg and shows it is clearly AC with slider pickup.
As Ray says, the green E18 first appeared in the Märklin cattledog in 1958 :
The blue E18 appeared the following year in 1959
But, as Ray says, these E18’s were gone from the cattledog by 1960.
I also have an old E44 that the same friend sold me. No box, no paperwork. Nowhere is it marked Märklin, nor HAMO. From the best I can make out from my Koll’s, this could be 3011.6, made 1966 & 1967. From Koll’s it would seem 3011.5 & 3011.6 were in fact made by HAMO.
The E44 last appears in my early Märklin cattledogs in 1961/62.
A very interesting note-in-box appears on page 10 of my 1964/65 cattledog, saying that if you want an E44 to run on AC, then get one from HAMO in Nuremberg !
Indeed there is no E44 featured in my 1966/7 cattledog.
Thus I wonder what relationship Märklin and HAMO (of Nuremberg) had at that time.
Regards,
PJ
