Lutz, while I appreciate most of your posts, this one is wrong!!! Walthers, IMHO is a piss poor "distributor" of Maerklin spares. Most of the parts, you note, on their website, are "Expected" with date "Unknown" and on "Back order", meaning that they are not "in stock". If I am not mistaken, they have been our USA distributor for over a year, now, so Walthers would have no excuse for not getting spare parts in stock and on their website? You do not live in North America, so tell us what kind of experience you have had, dealing with Walthers? There have been many other threads on this list concerning Walthers and IMHO, Walthers is one of the reasons that Maerklin is loosing market share and exposure in North America. I also collect LGB and it has almost disappeared from the North American market, when it used to have 30 to 40 percent of the Large Scale business. Maybe we should invite Mr. Pluta, to our forum, so he can learn directly, from the customer, what we have to go through? (Sorry off topic)
Jaques is 100% right on. When I needed parts for a Maerklin lok, my local hobby shop repair person, went directly to Germany (to another dealer, his contact), bypassing the whole Marklin of America, system. pyxa69, marklin.de, does not ship to the USA, because it has a "no compete" clause with its USA distributor, Walthers.
It is too bad that marklin.de, did not seem to put a spare parts support clause, in its contract with Walthers. My buddy works for Mazda of America, and every Mazda dealer, has to have a minimum parts inventory, to be a new car dealer. As a "zone rep", he makes sure the dealer had these parts, so that if you broke down in rural Montana, a part is available. This is called "Customer Service"!!!
