Red Märklin tipper cars 4513

I am learning how to do airbrush work and decided to try my hand at weathering some rolling stock. I decided to alter the red Märklin 4513 tipper cars that I have as I have always found their red color horribly unprototypical. Their toy-like appearance also mean I am not likely to mess up any high value rolling stock with my experiments.

Here are the 6 cars in their original red:

Collection of BR 18 locomotives

I noticed a growing number of BR 18 type locomotives in my locomotive collection, so I got them out for a photo shoot...

All are Märklin models. I started off in the engine yard around the roundhouse.
Baden IVh, 18 434, Rheingold, Bavarian S3/6

Märklin turnout-lantern 7547

I have some K-track turnout lantern sets and I decided to install some today.

Buffer weathering

Although nicely designed, I find the Märklin track buffers too sterile but this is fairly easily rectified with a bit of painting

Märklin LED interior lights 73400

I was pleased to see that Märklin announced LED interior lighting so I ordered some sets and today I got around to trying them out.

Each light strip is a 10cm circuit board and they can be connected together or cut in half, allowing any length in increments of 5cm to be created.

In each 73400 box you get a 10cm strip, two plastic clips and two pieces of double sided foam padding plus a generic set of instructions.

Review: Märklin mobile crane 46715

My Märklin mobile crane 46715 arrived this week. As reported by others, it is on the noisy side and somewhat faster than it could have been, but overall its a nice model.  Trying to operate it by selecting different functions and getting the motor direction is not very friendly, so I created a control screen in my software - and it provides a much easier method of controlling the crane....

Märklin Digital Crane 7651+7054

Some 14 years ago my wife bought me the Märklin 7651 digital crane. It is the classic rotary crane with a special decoder in the base to allow digital operation.

Preliminary tests indicated a nasty design flaw, the decoder allowed the crane to slew or raise/lower the hook but one cannot do both operations at once! I suspect that since there are two motors, one for each function, they designed it so that only one motor could be active at any one time - in order not to overload the decoder. Gebr. Märklin,  here is a solution:, use a decoder than can handle the load!

Digitising the Märklin turntable 7286

The Märklin digital turntable decoder (7687) is meant to work with the 7286 turntable but it is horrible. The decoder tries to memorize the positions of the connected tracks and this needs to be refreshed periodically and this requires laborious 'programming' to tell it where track positions are. Even then the current that it provides to the turntable seems to be wholly inadequate - causing me to dismantle and service my turntable a number of times until I worked out that it ran just fine using the analog controller. Any disturbance to the movement seems to make the 7687 module go to sleep and it needs to be 'rebooted' .

I therefore decided not to drive my turntable using the 7687 decoder. Since I am using a PC to control my layout I decided that it would be simpler and more reliable to use a simple k84 type module to control the turntable. These pictures show how I did this.

The manual controller that comes with the turntable provides the plug interface to the turntable and a rather pathetic direction knob and on / off button to stop and start the turntable...

Review: Digitising a 3048 steamer with ESU LokPilotDCC

The ESU LokPilot and LokPilotDCC decoders are good multifunction decoders with load control and many configurable settings, for example, the light intensity of lights, various flashing patterns, etc. The only reason these decoders do not get 5 stars is their extreme sensitivity to momentary loss of power - which can happen if the track is dirty.

This is a sequence of photographs showing how I installed an ESU LokPolotDCC decoder into my Märklin 3048 steamer that has the old motor type with the large flat commutator. Also shown is the relay I added for the smoke unit.

Märklin 6015 Booster

I decided that since it is a bit of a pain to get decent size wires into the Märklin 6015 booster connections I would make a permanent connection that could simply be plugged in. I found that the harness from an old PC power supply had 4 leads of 18 AWG wire that would make a nice connection. As luck would have it, it also has a red a yellow and two black lines which I can easily treat as brown! I cut the wire a short distance form the plug and twisted the black + yellow leads as well as the black and red leads to reduce electrical interference. After stripping the ends I primed them with solder and inserted them into the booster connections. I then dropped some solder on the ends to help make the best possible connection. The last step was to fasten all four wires to the small plywood base I had cut for the booster so that any tension on the wires would not stress the connections.

I can now screw the base firmly wherever I need the booster and connect with a matching PC  power supply female.

I intend using a female 'Y' that will give me an additional set of wires allowing a nice ground bridge to the IB nearby.