Rob,

There has been some discussion on a German forum called Stummiforum about this set and the apparent failure of the lights of the cab control car.
Conclusion reached is that the car has a Marklin factory construction failure and has not been put together in a correct way!
Firstly,there would seem to be no electrical connection between the pickup shoe and the PCB ("Platine" in German) inside the car!
This can be fixed by installing two wires as shown on the picture.
Secondly,possibly the clear plastic light transmitting tube may be installed upside down!
On the picture the correct position is shown.
All-in-all not a prober job by Maerklin and failing quality control,shame on Maerklin!
If you cannot fix it youself i would certainly recommend you to contact client support of Maerklin in Germany via their website and probably they will repair without charge.
What i understand is that the hood of the cab control car can be taken off fairly easily.

www.stummiforum.de/viewt...amp;t=70349&start=25

In short:

Detach the hood from the car.
Look at the PCB so that you can read the letters printed on it.
Pull a wire from pickupshoe connection left under to AB2 on the PCB.
Pull a wire from pickupshoe connection top right to A2 on the PCB.
Ensure that the clear plastic light transmitter has V shaped notch in the middle pointed downwards.

Thank you both, NS1200 and Tom!

I will open up the car a little later today and take whatever action is deemed necessary, based upon your information and the Stumi formum photos. I'm glad that this is a a problem that I should be able to solve without my set taking an unplanned trip to Deutschland.

I'm still a little confused though about how the cab car is supposed to work once everything is installed correctly. Is direction determined by a mechanical sensor? Or does the car contain some form of digital decoder?

Thanks again for the help,

Awesome! That's what I had hoped. I actually want to use the cars and cab car with my red E69 The lovely V36 is about to become a branch line freight lok.

Thanks,

Quality control seems to be lacking. I just bought the 2 1962 Rheingold three passenger car sets. Of the six cars, four were missing one of the electrical plates that go into the coupler pocket. Fortunately I was planning on using the current conducting couplers and those kits included the missing pieces.

Hi!
Assuming that two cars have a slider, this could be a feature. Each set of three does not need these plates at each outer end.
But this should be documented - and Märklin's documentation is not always second to none.

The piece in the middle was missing on 4 of the 12 coupler pockets.
The other two pieces are shown to show the relationship of the part in the current conducting couplers.

Interesting and sad really. A half cent piece is left out to save production costs.
This it the first time I got a set where they were not in every coupler pocket.
The instructions make no note of a specific order and direction to the cars, so if you just arbitrarily put them on the track, your interior lighting may not work. I'm not sure everyone would know how to figure out why they do not work.

Hello,

With help from NS1200, Tom and whomever it was that posted the extremely useful images to the Stummi forum, I was able to make the necessary repairs to the cab car today. Once I added the two missing wires and fixed the upside down plastic piece, the lights came alive.

Sadly there was one other assembly defect I had to overcome. The wheels with the mechanical direction sensor were improperly installed and would not turn! So I had the pleasure of learning how the mechansim works ... the hard way. Upon removing the wheels the small metal piece that fits over the axle fell to the floor. Took me 10 minutes to find it :-) The wheels and direction sensor are now properly installed and the car works as it should!

Thanks again for the help!