Hi all,

Having played/worked with Marklin almost 65 Years of my Life. I must say that there needs to be a improvement when it come to Instruction of all of their Equipment.

There is no Instruction on how to hook up the Stop-Block with the Light. There is limited Instruction on how to hook up Digital Signals/ Mobilstation/ Centralstation

and the list gets longer every Year.

Marklin ( as big as they are ) should be able to supply a DVD with step by step Instruction for Start-Sets / Mobilstation / Centralstation / Signals and all Accessories.

All the Hype on who much the Centralstation can do is wasted if one does not know how to operate even the basic features.

ARE YOU LISTENING MARKLIN YOU CAN NOT RELY ON THE MARKLIN FORUMS TO FIX YOUR LACK OF INSTRUCTIONS

I am aware that Marklin in the Past made some VHS Tapes on how to get started but those are now long obsolete.

Hardly a Day goes by when on this Forum one asks how to do this or how to hook up certain Items ( not everyone has the complete Library of the Marklin magazine )

Martin

Martin,

You're right, of course, but this seems to be the norm for virtually everything you buy today. I bought a digital camera recently, and had to go online to find the instructions, which were hopeless anyway.

I believe the art of writing instruction manuals has been lost.

On the other hand, young people today seem to have no trouble at all knowing how everything works as soon as they open the box. I believe this generation has grown up learning how things work by experimentation.

On a related note, we seem to be seeing a lot of questions on the forum which are easily answered by just opening the supplied manual to the right page. Are people throwing the manuals out without looking at them, or are they relying on help they can readily get from online forums like this one and just not bothering to read the manuals?

I won't go into specific examples because I don't want to embarrass anyone, but there have been some really basic questions asked in the last few weeks!

Juhan, I have always answered questions on this forum on all kinds of topics, but it would be nice if those asking sometimes paused to see if they already have the answer.

Coming back to Martin's first post above, he claims that Marklin do not supply instructions with the illuminated stop blocks, and yet this is not so, as you can see at the foot of this post. Even if the instructions have been lost, it is the work of a moment to find the item on Marklin's online database and download the PDF, as I have done here.

The instruction sheet does indeed show how you should/can connect it as it should be, but the basic electric principles are not explained and that is up to us to explain as eg "common ground" in this specific example... We just cannot assume that everyone knows the basics about electricity and the magic it brings, so we must have a positive attitude and try to help even with the simplest questions that we more seasoned guys think "everyone should know"...

They have made an excellent wiring book "Controlling/Switching/Running - Electrical Manual" (07421) with very good instructions regarding connections of all kinds, both analog & digital (with CS1, though) even including the newer digital signals wiring in analog. The best wiring book I have seen so far regarding Märklin railroads.... It came in 2007....

A slight update to that book with additional instructions for CS2 and the latest digital accessories would be very nice indeed, even if the principles are basically the same...

So I think we should not put them down too much for not trying, since the old "Electrical handbook" already has had a more modern version for many years - albeit less known than the old classic one...

Hi,

An interesting example of the difference between the Marklin instructions in German, and those in English, is the new series of digital loco decoders.

The instruction booklet for the 21 pin series, 60945, 60946 and 60947, contains the German section in the front, and the English section at the back. The diagram of the insertion method of the 21 pin decoder into the circuit board is contained in the German section, but not in the English section. This caused me no end of trouble, because as a person who has no dealings with electronic devices at this level, it is perfectly simple to insert the female decoder onto the male 21 pins circuit board upside down, it fits either way.

regards
Kimball

Why isn't Marklin funding this forum since we seem to the bulk of their English customer support?

Or we can make a deal with Marklin, we get 5 bucks off of any Marklin product sold from the ship for every informational post we make on the forum.

Sound fair to you? ... its perhaps letting Mark off a bit easy though.

- Mark

it has been discovered, by women, men do not read instruction manuals,we only read them when something goes wrong.

I've noticed this on a lot of occasions and I remember in my younger days, new items descriptions, full of fantastic words and you felt reading all the headlines you're on cloud 9. since than I've taken these marketing words with a pinch of salt and analyzed them a bit more and one comes to the conclusion it has very little to do with the prototype except its looks similar and there are no information about how it all works, Roco locos have no detail about their functions on their website.

slightly off topic

I haven't followed Märklin lately or their instruction booklets but when the motorola digital system came out, including the instruction booklet (first in German and it took a while to print it in English) it helped me a lot but it stopped at going any further with the extension of routes and how to program them with more than 3 tracks.
The one thing that put me off was the introduction and instructions how you can use your old motorola system with the new CS 1 and , it was like a spaghetti soup with wires and components going everywhere.
Most the questions asked here on this forum I find by searching it myself and than post the answers, sometimes it helps when you understand the German language or you use the right search tool to get there. I find Google chrome pretty good, there are others out there and if not careful, some internet browsers use their own preferred search program but when you search for an item, word or place they tell you all about everything else except what you've asked for (Ask is one of them)

I remember one particular member who asked frequently questions which could have been searched and found if he had the will on his own to do so and being so close to this field one asked the question: he is not incapacitated or academically impotent.
Myself, I hate searching the forum for already allegedly posted topics and every time I do a search (my own postings) I can't find them.

Besides searching for answers or manuals today it is a marketing strategy; produce new items first and worry about anything else down the line.
The ECoS is a prime example unless you buy the unit there is very little information available on wider information until you buy the unit and register it with the ESU forum and apparently there are written updates for these units., with other words you have one generic volume of instructions and anything is new or has been altered is on another planet and you have to find it, e.g. Led's, an everyday component these days but getting anything here in Australia is almost impossible you may can buy but at an extremely inflated price


John

Maerklin is no exception.
We are living in a world getting more complicated by the day.
Please try and read the manual of your newly bought digital flatscreen TV and you know what i mean.
Same story for a brandnew washing machine and dishwasher,so many options and so little time to try and understand.
I lost track during the last episodes of Maerklin analogue and Delta systems.
Apart from anything else,the whole digital era has made our hobby much more expensive.

Paul.