Here are my brief impressions of the Treff weekend.
I would agree with Kiwi Alan, and Mike. There did not seem to be as much on display.
I did the factory tour on Friday morning. I got the commemorative model of the box car no problem. You could also build a locomotive, as at Stauffer Park. The tour was well set out, but a lot of stairs, likely a problem for those who are not good walkers. It was a highlight to see the making of locomotives. The insider 103, and 75 were conspicuous. Staff were very patient at explaining, though my poor schoolboy German and their equivalent English was a challenge.
Leonard Weiss had a track bed repair machine, and what I think was a track laying machine. Their Kof was there too. There was not as much model railroad to see. There was one modular layout along the wall in the side room that was quite detailed. It was single track with passing tracks, and broken into blocks. Each block had an operator, and the pleasure seemed to be in passing off the train to the next controller. I wish the Italian Group with their wonderful M track layout of four years ago would come back. Unlike last Treff there was no display of thermite welding. The live steam groups were not there either.
Stauffer park had a good display of the main scenery, model, car, and train makers. As in past years Marklin was set up so that you could make a locomotive, however it was three variants of the Traxx type which I made last year, so I did not do one. One was in modern SNCF FRET livery that seemed popular. I bought one of the "treff" cars, a copper coloured tank car. I gather they ran out of those at some stage. It is quite attractive and I am happy with it. I got to play with a CS 3 for a little while. I think I need more time and perhaps some patient teaching to understand the advantages. Four years ago, as I recall Marklin had a CS 2 in a sort of Insiders only area with an attendant. Under his supervision I played with it, and the then new 218. It sold me on both. It was a large area with lots of tables where people were eating and watching presentations by Marklin.A repeat of that would have been good from my point of view.
I got to the meeting on platform 4 at 4. There were forum members from India, the U.S., Australia, The U.K., France, Spain, (I think), Canada (me), and Sweden. The meeting ended rather abruptly as the Rheingold was leaving, and we scurried off to watch it leave. The 241 was also moving to it was quite distracting.
The undisputed star of the event was the 241, both the big one, and the model. There seemed to be a rush to order, and even in some cases first to order from your particular dealer. I have ordered, but have no idea if I was the first from my part of the world.
The EWS arena seemed to have relatively little on display. There were some interesting layouts, but to me the best one was the outdoor one.
Another highlight, for me, was to have a beer at the Hohenstaufen and play with their Z gauge layouts, makes the beer taste great!! I hope to make it for 2019. For a Marklin fan it makes for a wonderful three days.
