Marklin, Trains, Catenary all in a super small space

[malletman]

I figured I would start a seperate thread on my small Marklin layout. When I first designed and build this layout my wife lived in a small mobile home in Erie, PA. There was no extra room for a layout. The layout would have to be small and be located right in our living room. I had a space of 59" wide by 40" deep in one corner and between the wall and our wood pellet stove. I found a small track plan in a Marklin track book from the 50's that would fit in that space, even gave me the needed part numbers for the overhead Catenary wiring. What led to the Marklin choice was a present from my aunt and uncle of a small starter set they bought while in Germany visiting my uncles relitives. I chose to stay with the vintage "M" style tinplate track with stud contact for the "center rail". I also chose to go with older models, both with the trains and the building kits. The only departure is the station or Bahnoff. That kit is a brand new Vollmer kit. The rest of the buildings are old Vau Pe kits, old Kibri, Vollmer and Hoffman. The signals are a mix of Marklin and Fleishmann and I used Viessmann for the platform lights. All the buildings are lighted, many with multipule bulbs. All the switches are remote control and have lighted lanterns on them. My diesel and small steam locomotives or Loks pickup their power from the studs in the middle of the track. My electric loco or E-Lok picks up power from the catenary only, lower the pan and she doesnt run. All the engines are diecast metal and feature all metal spur gear drives, very smooth and quiet. The passenger cars are tinplate metal and several of the freight cars are mostly metal. Everything has metal wheels. The catenary took about a year of saving up the train budget, then one big check to my favorite source of vintage Marklin stuff. She lives over in Denmark, great lady to deal with and very fair prices. I just emailed her a copy of the parts list from my layout book and she sent me exactly what I needed. While Marklin isnt cheap and finding things that fit the layout more difficult, I have found it made attending train shows more fun, instead of flying around the show looking for the best deals on what everybody else is looking for, I take my time looking for the oddball item on a table full of USA stuff, pick thru building kits for ones that fit my layout. Since moving back to Indiana state and into a house, that while not any larger than the mobile home, is much nicer. I do now look for a few USA items to operate at the local club, I may build a small logging layout eventualy. But I hunt for brass engines, old wood car kits ect. Marklin is very unique, gets loads of attention when I take it to shows, espicaly the TV folks that came to me instead of the huge modular HO layout. Most modelers have never seen Marklin or any European trains operate, let alone run off the catenary. I hope by showing what can be done in a very small space, with HO trains instead of N or Z, that more folks get into the hobby and maybe with Marklin trains. Cheers Mike

 

[tankist]

very nice
is the catenary powered?

i have a friend visiting over the pond right now, hunting old PIKO stuff for me. perhaps i'll have something to show-off as well

 

[malletman]

Yes, up to 24v ac power on the catenary when I am running the electric locomotive, all Marklin trains use AC power with a 3 rail system, studs between the rails for steam and diesel locomotives, the electrics can use the overhead or the studs, mine use the overhead and have thier 3rd rail pickup ski removed.

 

[Gary B]

Back in the day when Department stores had real Hobby Shops in them, my mom would take me to Marshall Fields State Street Store and I was always fasinated by their Marklin display layout. Those tight curves running through their Alpine looking terrain and towns I thought were so cool. I actually saw a similar display in the same store maybe ten years ago in the furniture department. Maybe it was the same one brought out of storage. Your church I regonize from my childhood layout. I'm sure I got it on one of those trips with mom downtown. Oddly enough, my son has an N scale version on a small layout he built.
I never went the European route in model railroading but seeing it always brings back fond memories. Thanks!

 

[malletman]

I did the American route for many years, belong to the local club ect. But the total lack of space, combined with the "want it all" mentality when walking into a train show made the Marklin European route the easiest choice for me. The starter set gift from my relitives helped push me along. I sold off about 90% of my USA stuff, wasnt able to run it and the local club where we lived for 8 years was a turn off, DCC only and just not very friendly to me. I tried Z scale for about 2 months and it was just to small for me fingers to deal with. I wanted diecast engines, like the Lionel I grew up with and one can get that with Marklin. Thier older engines feel like, smell like the vintage Lionel's I grew up with. I still have my dad's Lionel set from 1949, along with a Shakespeare Express set that circles the ceiling of our living room with all my Dickensville buildings behind the track. All those buildings other than the 2 houses were bought new in the box as kits at various train shows, predominantly the one in Erie, PA thats held 2 times a year. Once a few of the repeat dealers found out I was looking for Marklin and older German kits, they would set aside stuff that came in with collections they would buy and bring it to the show as they knew I would buy it. I still have more than 15 building kits still to assemble this winter. I need to find a couple of tunnel portals so I can build the embakement to hide that one corner of the layout and make it a bit more 3d instead of a flat surface. The small size does make it a bit hard to do a "cookie cutter" style layout, even though I really want to put the road under the tracks at the foreground of the top pic. I think it can be done, but I would need someone that knows how to do it helping me before I start cutting table top! Mike

 

[Gary B]

The Fields layout got a lot of milage by having trains running on different levels.
The thing was almost a big cube under glass. Really not much larger than your layout Mike, just way more vertical!