I have bought 5 Rail Cars 39730 for myself and for others and out of the 4 only one seems to ok.

The first one has completely stopped working after about 10 minutes use.

The second one has worked for about 40 hours and one of the video screens is faulty.

The third one also stopped working after about 5 minutes use.

The fourth one has had about an hours use, and is still operating ok.

The fifth one I haven't opened but will be doing so in the next few days.

This is a pretty poor performance for a Marklin product - basically a 60% failure rate. I hope someone from Marklin reads this and can explain to me why this is happening - no wonder it is out of production - it's Sh@@.

Know that I have that off my chest, perhaps someone can tell me if it's possible to change the time for the doors to open and close - again the Marklin documentation is very vague.

Regards
Greg

Hi, Drongo, I am sorry to hear about your problems with this rail car.

A few thoughts:

1. Why did two of the cars stop working? If you give us details, perhaps someone here could suggest a SIMPLE solution.

2. Can you live with the screen being defective? It may be better than returning the loco. Having said that, you have 5 such locos, so this may not be a huge problem for you.

3. Are you sure you want to open the fifth one? You may be able to return it to Marklin and get a refund of the money in view of the failures of the other three.

4. Incidentally, you are only addressing four locos, not five. This is because the fifth one has not yet been opened. This makes the failure rate 75% not 60%.

The loco is otherwise really beautiful, albeit temperamental. Reminds me of ..... [politically incorrect statement censured by writer]

I bought the famous video doors railcar, because I was in the IT sector. I like to collect those items made by Marklin that demonstrate a step forward with integrating technology into model railways. Yes, there is always a risk with emerging technology, but that's what used to keep me in a job.. So I am not afraid of failing video doors.

Mine works fine with the eCos and WinDigiPet. I might get it out again next month for a small railcar set up.

Märklin appears to be having some quality control issues right now judging from my recent experience. Two expensive passenger coach sets arrived with broken interior lighting, which I was at least able to fix myself. My 2016 Insider VT 95.9 railbus only worked for a few weeks. After it failed my CS2 would shut down cold whenever that railbus was present on my layout. It appeared to cause the power supply for the CS2 to stop briefly and restart, even when it was on a booster circuit, which makes no sense to me.

I sent it to the dealer who could not figure out what the problem was either and it is now back at the Märklin repair facility in Germany. He said it is up to Märklin to repair it or replace it and he would let me know what happens. He was waiting for it to arrive so that he could include it with all of the other items he was returning for warranty work, if that is any indication of the prevalence of problems.

Of course my ESU 31089 V200 burned its commutator so badly in 4-5 hours of operation that it would no longer run, so Märklin is not alone in needing to get a better grip on quality control and product testing.

I image it will be a good while before I see that VT 95.9 and trailer again, and that is too bad because it is a beautiful model that I definitely want on my roster again one of these days.