Garish is the word I'd use for it. Not for me, but I do know someone who may be interested in some of the Coke wagons, as he already has some from other manufacturers. He probably won't get the loco, as he hates American locos, Diesels and F7's!

An interesting note in page 42-43 about the Palatine diva.
Take look at front of the locomotive on the stud contact.
RUST!!
This is the result by use water glue to glue the ballast on the K-tracks.

But Märklin also offer more functions in the locomotives.
BR E44 with green body are nice model with functional pantographs.
I beat this model will be favorite for the german customer.
Bell shaped armatures and DC motor welcomes so long they works better than cheap motor...

Hope you realise it's price is €999.99!

Yes, It is too expensive for me!

Does that make my 30 year old plus Fleischmann model of the same thing now worth thousands? Ok so the kids were young and it was their favorite "plaything" so the condition may be difficult to describe Oh and I shant be buying a new one this year either.

That’s sounds odd to me.

When you look at the train (2 wagons and the crane), that would mean each part of the train is roughly 48 cm long ... When you look at the first wagon, it is clearly not 48 cm long! Just looking at the size of the coupling and supposing the picture is at scale, there is clearly something I don’t understand.

We will have the confirmation when it’s released.

Antoine

Yes, I agree with you Bertil

Cheers

Antoine

Note that the Marklin set is individually packaged so you could buy as many as you wish.

Also the Trix set has a different set of road numbers, so you could have 18 wagons with individual numbers.

It was reported today that Maerklin's prototype Coca Cola train was destroyed when it collided with a similar train that Maerklin had been planning for Van Melle, the company that makes Mentos.
According to the information, both trains were last spotted under a column of what could only be described as foamy brown liquid...

Regards

Mike C

Hello

If the length is 46cm not 146, then maybe the price is 99€ instead of 999€

best regards

When the Goliath Crane was announced 2(?) years ago as a limited edition at 999 Euros, everyone was waxing lyrical and threatening to order one forthwith. Having said that I don't think it went down as well as hoped - I noticed last week you can still get a new one discounted down to 749 Euros. I think the NI steam crane is "nicer" and better - I still wont be buying one but I would if I could.

And if you got 2017's set of 24 ore cars, then you'd have..............lots! (42).

I will buy the crane when I feel it is the crane of my life ))))

I haven't really looked at those wagons, are they the same but with different numbers?

Reminds me of the 'Lange Henry' set. If you got the Marklin set with loco, plus the box of additional wagons plus the Trix box of additional wagons which had different wagon numbers ot the Marklin ones, then you ended up with almost a prototypical train length.

Bu then HO (Tom) must be getting a tanker train like that, he gets another three Wascosa tankers this year ...

Too expensive. Maerklin has declining sales and profit. So their ROI (return on investment) is declining too. Nevertheless they are still profitable. It looks like they do not go for a maximum of profit. My impression is, they only do what they can do with an internal financing.

On the other hand they offered the French 241 A last year and got a success they had not expected. I think they thought to sell this loco over the complete year in 2018 (guess this by an interview form Sieber jr.) and now they are already sold out. Sometimes unexpected success also happens. So wait and be patient. The year 2018 has just started.

And don't you think that the IC 2 “new construction” is not a new construction? When you read the offer it is a complete new train including the loco! And it is an offer not as a complete train set. It is an offer for single coaches, but completely equipped including a mfx-decoder with special functions for all coaches. Yes, and it is only really fully functioning if you buy the complete coaches for a complete train. Yes, and they raised prices again for one coach. But I see more than one strategy in their new offers for 2018. Maerklin is under a very strong change. Actually forget all about what happened in the last years. Do not interpolate any longer the past into the future for Maerklin.

Second: how often did and do I read here, --- yes would by, but not as a complete set – I do not need it complete, I need it partially --- ??? Now Maerklin is changing its offering policy (even for the funny coke-train), followed these requests and nobody recognizes it. Everybody is only writing about the ugly coke-train. Isn't it a small tragedy?

Hi,

All we know is that profit margins have fallen significantly since the insolvency, when they were around 10 per cent for several years until the Siebers took over the company. The latest figure I read about was under five per cent. It seems to me that Märklin spends a lot of money on publicity stunts in a saturated market ...

Given the fact that Roco, Fleischmann and Hornby all lost money last year, it would be interesting to find out the relevant figures for Märklin and Piko. IMO, Märklin's 2018 news catalogue looks as if they didn't have a lot of cash to invest into new tooling. It's strange that there's a picture of two photoshopped old vintage locos on the first page of the Märklin H0 section ...

On top of that, Märklin seems to be really greedy this year. Prices are higher than ever before, and instead of selling us a 30470 with the old telex coupler and a vintage freight car set with Relex couplers, which would certainly have been popular, Märklin wants customers to buy a double pack containing at least one useless loco (if not two), calling it 'the final edition'. The Coca-Cola train is another example of a useless model. Profit margins won't go up as long as Märklin acts like this ...

What will I buy this year? Definitely the DSB coal car set, maybe the ETA 150 as I used to have a red one as a child. I'm still waiting for the DSB Nohab I ordered in 2017!

Best regards,

Mark

Well, that's a generalised statement which might be correct but might be wrong. We won't have access to Marklin's sale figures so we don't know for sure what will sell and what won't.

I'll most likely buy the Coke refrigerated car, and I know someone who may buy some of the other Coke cars, as he already has Coke wagons from other manufacturers.

As for the 30470 set, I'm undecided whether to get both or just the DB BR44.

I'm wondering if there might be a market for the DSB loco from people who have a 3045 without the decorative band around the funnel, who buy the DSB 30470 so they can transfer the band from that to their 3045 (or swap the bodies). There's a big price difference on the 2nd hand market between 3045's with the band and those without.

Yes, get a look into www.handelsregister.de - and I read an article about Maerklin in the German paper "Handelsblatt". Also Sieber jr. mentioned (more generally) in his interview (as far as I remember, I saw it on YouTube), where he told about declining, unsatisfying sales, but Maerklin will be still profitable. In this interview he also said, that Maerklin is still doing 80% of its sales (big surprise to me) with collectors and not with younger gaming people. Their aim is to change this ratio, but it is more complicated and harder as he (and probably his father) had thought about it. They are on a successful way, but the lost of sales from collectors is not yet compensated by sales with gamers.

This is very obvious to me, because to sell one loco for 600 € you have to sell about 3 starter sets, which are regularly cheaper as a collector's engine. And it is easier to sell to one person instead to 3. But you see these changes also in the 2018 news catalogue with the offers of My World (p 23 following) and start-up offerings (p 29 following) with the Jim Knopf series or the new brick coach (art #44737).

I myself donated one of the LEGO coach to a young boy from my neighborhood, who is joining me sometimes for playing MRR. I am myself was surprised what he did in LEGO on top of this coach. He built his own fantasy setup in LEGO on the platform of this wagon. This was as important to him as to run this wagon later on on my layout. Of course he learned a lot of things thereof, e.g. about the vehicle width. He first built wagons, where they did not go through a curve or could not pass another train.

Sieber sen. is not only the owner of the Simba Dickie Group, he is also a real salesman for toys. He knows what kids like. Do we collector or older gaming people know that too?

There is an article published 12 months ago. They were profitable back then.
Around the Nuremberg toy fair Mr Sieber will give several interviews with current information.

They offer battery-powered trains, RC cars, toys of all sorts with sound effects and lights, ...

Hi Kimball,

At least the Br102 Skoda locos are a new tooling, and available this year in at least two liveries.

Other locos have significant tooling changes, such as the 'Elephant' and the TRAXX AC3. There are also several wagons with new tooling.

Although other years have seen more new toolings in the January new items I would not discard the possibility that Marklin may make up for it in the Summer and Fall new items and/or a 'special' like the 241 last year.

Ah, thanks for taking the time to post the pictures. As they were not a wagon that interested me I hadn't looked at them that closely.

I'm sorry but there must be a mistake beacuse the 37787 is the Sapsan

Oops, 37797 fixed.

Hi all,

Now that I've done some more reading through this thread, I had some commentary on things for discussion:

1- The 241 is the big new tooling/item for this year. For those who are saying there isn't one, they are really overlooking it. Marklin simply chose different timing to launch it, and wisely so in my opinion. It was the top of European MRR headlines for weeks, and not amidst the industry news clutter that is January. And they also delivered it before people started earmarking their budget for Roco/Piko etc 2018 new items...

2- It really is a lovely catalog, all sorts of delightful trains. And that isn't biased as I have really narrowed my purchasing focus, but I still flipped through the catalog and was really excited by a lot of items that still "weren't my thing" but look great regardless.

3- Then the sticker shock sunk in. Now that pricing is online and ready for orders, I realized a lot of "mundane" items have taken a big price hike vs near identical ones from recent years. My curiosity here is whether dealer margins are the same and this helps prop up the company, or whether the dealer margin to RRP has grown to help the dealers make a living. The cost of manufacturing a plastic passenger car cannot have risen an (estimated based on my fumbling numbers and not knowing precise manufacturing costs) 30+ percent. Especially if produced in a Marklin factory and not by a 3rd party.

4- So it gets back to the profitability discussion above. I have to just wonder if Marklin had a more stable catalog, changing only paint schemes for the most part. (or doing a "regular" catalog like the classic line they are marketing), if they could just stabilize pricing, margins, and their own long term stability? I realize "new" is what drives incremental sales, but at a certain point the R&D spends have to stop making sense, especially in a shrinking collector market. Driving volume may not be the right move vs. less volume but a stable margin/profitability.

Just my 2 cents. And I'll be buying more this year than in many years so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite!