No laughing, congratulations! How did you come by your enthusiasm for Marklin?

Regards,
Roger

I like it too.
There is nothing wrong with a simple layout.
I have a small Trix test oval and have lots of fun with it.

Marco

Ok, I should probably put this in the new member area and introduce myself, maybe I'll cut and paste it there too. But my wife is the real driving force behind our new hobby. It's nice to find something we are both interested in. My wife in her late teens (mid 1960's) spent a Summer in Europe and road the trains everywhere. Then with her first husband (I'm the lucky second) lived in Germany for eight years and fell in love with Germany and again, the trains. So she's always loved the trains and looks back fondly on the travels she took on them. So she has always wanted a train set with a European theme.

Now that our children are out of the house, we have a little extra time and a LITTLE disposable income. On the TV we saw an ad for the Amherst Train Show in Massachusetts and she said she wanted to go. I tried putting her off but she would have nothing to do with that. We live in Connecticut just 45 minutes from where the show was being held. So a couple weekends ago we went to the show. We went to European Train Enthusiasts booth and spent 90% of the time we had there pestering everyone with stupid newbie questions, we had zero knowledge of trains. Everyone was SOOOOOO friendly and helpful, I quite frankly was shocked. Several people took time for us but especially Alex Leonard who answered endless questions about trains, Marklin, and the wonderful multi-level layout he was displaying.

With her desire for a European theme Marklin was the obvious choice.

So, the hobby shops in the area have either very limited or no Marklin stock so I started scouring Ebay and bought a couple lots of locomotives, cars, track etc. so we would have the hardware for when I get the layout designed.

So now I'm at the layout design stage....

Thanks for asking.

Great start in style, congratulations! The Schienenbus is a true classic, nice that you gave it the first chance to run.

No I didn't , but I am wondering as you get elctricity to the engines. I myself have still plenty of M-tracks and analogue locos form my teenager time in the 60ties. I have never seen a curved M-track power supply.

Meanwhile I am very happy changing to a digital railyway with the C-tracks. I really have problems to fix M-tracks together, the connecting pieces are to small for my eyes now, whereas the C-tracks I put together blind. Nevertheless I use M-tracks for my side yard for train storages and connect this yard with Märklins transition track C to M track (art# 24951) and I am very happy with it.

Do you want to go digital too or stay at analogue mode?

Congratulations! Have fun with Marklin trains.

Haha, been there done that with other hobbies. The old, "Nah, that's not a new locomotive, you must have just not noticed it."

TEEWolf,

M track curved with feeder wires is/was part number 5103 (30 degrees of arc, 360mm radius, similar to 5100).

Harold.

If you added four straight sections (2 on each side) that would be my first Märklin layout from my starter set. Happy collecting and operating!

Chuck

Hi Roger,

We may have been ships passing in the night Sunday afternoon, that is when we were at the show. We did not sign up, we weren't sure how deep we were going to get into the train hobby.