Still better than the Kingsbridge management years, and many compnies have fewer employees now, coming out of the pandemic, so overall, not too bad. Does the employee count include the Simba Dickie people involved with Marklin?

That sounds logical Croc. So the skeleton crew in Goppingen for production, design, Gyor Hungary, and others abroad at national offices and repair, and a few consultants. China?

Thank you, Croc! Interesting indeed!
Since you have compiled the data, would you mind posting charts reflecting productivity per employee (both revenue and results)? That can also indicate performance and trends.

Thank you Croc.

The stats you have are very revealing. Marklin have gone from a manufacturing company to a more of a design company and still kept their wow factor and charm. Quite obvious with your graphs shows these trends. The decrease in manufacture staff indicates for sourcing assembles from everywhere. Gone are the days of in house complete manufacture.

I can say that the design of Markin was the poorest in the Knightsbridge era. I repair Marklin and really know the brand technically which is my interest. I have in a BR24 2008 vintage loco and it is poor in design. It looks as though it was completely out sourced to China without any Marklin pedigree taken into account. The screws right through the assembly are completely different from anything pre or post, and self taping. Poor decoder with no functionality. And the snap together assembly prone to breakage on servicing.

Current Marklin design really appeals to me, having seen a few Flying Scotsman’s these are really state of the art. The sound in these, especially the whistles are a delight to hear. I think they have gone from 8 bit to 32 bit architecture over recent years with the decoders which comes out with the sound. Also the low fine speed control another great advance. Marklin have standardise design now with their top line locos. Decoder in the tender with speaker, supporting a front leiterplatte. This controls all the lights and dynamic smoke in the loco body. One the of the biggest improvements is the fine seperate details and making them more robust. They have gone from plastic to metal in a lot of instances lately.

Marklin always try and use heritage parts in new productions. The humble 7195 reverse springs seems to be used in the drawbars/couplings and the coupling rod pins never change. Also with disassembly, all come apart the same, with slight variations and no breakage, with great care mind you.

I may have got off track, however the design of their locos has gone back in house since Knightsbridge, a huge plus for their products. So from a technical view since Knightsbridge they have become state of the art and a delight to service on IMHO.

David

In 2008, I was not aware that Marklin even existed.

2015 and 2016 was the low point in terms of Markin's quality.
2021 and 2022 is the point where Simba Dickie's efforts start to bear fruit.

Another way of looking at this is that since the creation of the MHI in 1990, revenues appear to have dropped. According to the available statistics.

I will look into it!



The Knightsbridge era being 2006-2009/2010 or so?

And yes, I agree. Märklin has definitely placed itself firmly on the premium side of the market. The BR 05 insider of 2022 was insane to me, I still want one (hesitant due to reports of bad running characteristics on R1), it felt like it was miles ahead of everything else on the market with its dynamic smoke, light and sound functions, firebox glow etc.



Wow, that makes sense though. C-track alone is probably enough of a reason for a lot of people to pick Märklin/Trix over their competitors these days, I am thoroughly satisfied with every piece of C-track I own, even those that are now close to 18 years old. If anything, I can imagine the ratio is 95/5 C/K-track now.


Huh, I never heard that 2015 and 2016 would be low points in quality previously, but looking at the graph 2015/16 was indeed a low point speaking of the net results



He probably means HE was not aware Märklin existed in 2008

Thanks for sharing!

Are the revenues adjusted for inflation?
Personally for me, the prices (Euro-zone) has gone up A LOT since 2004. -At least here in Spain.

See you later... -In a while...

I agree with you David. But I can definitely say that many models are already leaving Marklin without being properly checked.

I have to wonder if I will be able to detect any difference.

Where are you Tom? I know that you have something to add to this discussion.

It is not adjusted for inflation! As you said, a lot has happened since 2004, and since the war in Ukraine started about 2 years ago, inflation skyrocketed.

We had similar discussions in the past.

A few years ago, the revenue per Märklin worker was about twice the revenue per Roco worker. Are Märklin workers really so much more efficient?
Never forget that Märklin is a reseller for third-party products in a large scale.
US citizens see the "Made in China" stickers on Märklin boxes that European citizens do not see.

With just above 200 blue-collar workers left in Göppingen, do not expect too much "Made in Germany" beside H0 gauge Insider models.

"In the rather small sphere of my childhood, HORNBY was the dominant brand of trains. I doubt that there's any statistics to support that claim though."

Hornby was the leading brand of model trains prewar and post war up until 1964. This was mainly in the UK and in the old Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia, SA, and New Zealand. In its final days, 1960 to 1965 it was the state of the art model train design. It super detailed range of goods wagons was the most finely detailed series, with injection moulded bodies and die cast under frames. Also the die cast locos with ring field motors were the best in the industry. They even surpassed Marklin at this time, especially with the simpler DC control. Both Hornby (Meccano) and Marklin were very similar companies and even the pre-war Dublo was a copy of the pre war 00 Marklin. Both were the industry leaders in quality in their own markets. Dublo was never really big in Europe, Marklin was.

In 1954 the Lines Bros Ltd company bought out Rovex Ltd that produced a plastic Princess 00 train set for Marks and Spencers in the UK. This company called Tri-ang Railways grew incredibly fast under Richard Lines, a company director of Lines Bros Ltd. The urban myth was Tri-ang took over Hornby Dublo in the late 1950's. This is not so if you see the sales records of Hornby Dublo. It was huge up until 1961, Meccano's main source of income. Tri-ang Railways actually took over the Hornby O gauge clockwork series which demised in the late 1950's, another Hornby product by Meccano. The O gauge Hornby was priced at entry level and was far cheaper than Hornby Dublo and the same price as Tri-ang Railways. However the market did move on to the cheap Tri-ang electric train set.

Then, there was a model train recession in 1963-65 period and all the UK model trains manufactures went to the wall. This included Tri-ang Railways and Hornby Dublo. Tri-ang survived by producing the X04 motors for Scalextrix slot cars, another Lines Bros company. Meccano, including Dublo was sold to Lines Bros in 1964. Tri-ang Railways was rebranded Tri-ang Hornby and the quality Dublo tooling was transferred to Wrenn Ltd and also thus rebranded. So the current Hornby made in China is really the Tri-ang Railways made by Rovex in the 1950's, not Meccano Hornby.

Current Hornby is now in dire straights financially with negative profit basically for the last few years. At the start of 2023 they have again had a change of senior management. The brand lost sight of the market by out sourcing its entire production from Margate, Kent to China. It also relied too heavily on Chinese design and lost sight of the customer. Management then, treated the Hornby model trains like white goods really. They lost a lot of management that knew the market, the likes of Simon Kolher. They brought in marketing "experts" instead. It was way that Marklin was going under Knightsbridge before Simba-Dickie took over, thank goodness they did not.

From the comments I hear bandied about over ring field motors I'm not sure that really is the case. I believe the magnets have a tendency to go very weak IIRC.

The ring-field motor introduce by Hornby Dublo (Meccano Ltd) in 1960 was a leading edge design. The engineer responsible was Ronald Wyborn, the Meccano chief electrical engineer. They were in reponse to Dublo's 1/2 inch motor that was designed by out source, previously. it was a copy of Tri-ang's X04 motor and was a disaster in heavy locos.

The ring-field was the first of the ring motors to be used in a model train. The main advantage was to stop cogging and retain magnetism. A few years later it was copied by Fleischmann for their locos. Also Tri-ang copied the design in their 1971 Evening Star tender drive loco. As for the loosing magnetism, Dublo used Alcomax type 111. This which proved far more durable than the Fleischmann/ Tri-ang Ferrite type material and had the advantage of being able to be re-magnetised if ever needed. The Ferrite types cannot be restored and do deteriorate. This is a problem with early Marklin/Hamo which used ferrite and now have the problem of not being able to be re-magnetised.

Also when you compare the Dublo ring-field motor with the Marklin flat comm motor in 1960 they are worlds apart. Marklin flat comms were a prewar design similar to Trix Twin. They were not up graded until the 3 pole DCM motors of about 1970 vintage. This led to the 5-pole High Efficiencies which I think are a superb design.