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Welcome to the Classic Märklin Coach Database!

This is a site created for collectors, hobbyists and others to gain easily accessible information about the classic Märklin tin-plate coaches in English language.

I myself am a collector of vintage Märklin mainly from the 1960's period of analog locomotives and metal coaches. I am particularly interested in the classic range of 24cm tin-plate coaches Märklin offered for many decades starting from the 1950's, and decided to start building up this database to both showcase my collection and as a means of sharing the information I have obtained during my collecting journey. My other motivation was to do my part in providing other non-German speaking collectors information in the English language, as a vast majority of Märklin-related information and sources, such as the fantastic Koll's Katalog is only available in German.

The Coaches

The scope of this database is the range of classic passenger coaches produced by Märklin with their golden age being in the 1960's and early 70's. The earliest examples of these coaches became available in 1958 when a new series of more realistic German D-Train coaches emerged following the change of the product numbering system in 1957. These coaches were made from folded tin-plate and were a maximum of 24cm long, which is a shorter length than what they should be if the scale was H0 all the way (1/87). This was done so that the coaches would be able to negotiate tight curves on people's layouts. After all, Märklin basically only offered R1 and R2 curves in the metal M-track lineup. The shortened length and the nature of tin-plate meant that some shortcuts and compromises had to be made when it come to detailing and the overall look of the coaches. The most striking ones are obviously the placement and number of windows and undergarments, for example. Also, short couplers were not used so the coaches run quite far apart from each other when coupled together.

These limitations, a shift in the trends of the hobby towards more and more realism and the evolution of plastic producing techniques led to the eventual decline of the tin-plate range in favour of plastic coaches in the 70's. After that, the tin-plate coaches had a second life serving as a durable and simple 'Hobby' series next to the more scale-like and realistic plastic range of coaches before finally being discontinued in 2003. What's interesting about the Hobby-lineup is that Märklin didn't stick to keeping some of the most important classic coach types available, but many new ones were also made such as the Inter-City coaches, the Pop-livery set or the TEE Rheingold-set.

Märklin's other brand Primex also got it's fair share of 'ex-Märklin' tin-plate coaches already in the early 70's and in fact many new alternate colour schemes were produced up to the late 90's that were never available in the Märklin-range. This is partly why the Primex-range is very much represented in this database too and I plan to include every single Primex-coach in the collection as well as the main series of Märklin-coaches.

After a long pause starting from the discontinuation of the 'original' tin-plate coaches in 2003, Märklin has started to offer new coaches made in the same style. These coaches are not usually offered individually, but come in sets or display boxes with a certain theme and are often referred to by collectors as replica-coaches. Many of these coaches are in fact replicas of older models but there are also some new interesting ones available and thus I consider these coaches as much part of the lineup as the rest.

The Scope

Naturally it is hard to define the limits of what fits in this broad category of classic coaches and so there are some few exceptions that I've made in some cases. Basically everything that's 24cm long and made from tin-plate counts, as do the shorter 22cm long coaches (such as the 4037). I've also included all the short two- or three-axle coaches that are from the same time period and have 4000-numbers. From the older models made before the new numbering system in 1957, I've added all the ones that were available with a 4000-number, such as the 4006 (ex-346/1) or the Swiss coaches (like the 4038) that were included in the lineup along with the 24cm range and took a long time to be replaced with newer models. Finally, there are some coaches that are not fully made of tin-plate but are still part of the same 'series' as they are still 24cm long and clearly don't yet belong to the new plastic 27cm-series. These are coaches like the 4050 (metal frame plastic body), the 4066 (plastic frame, metal body) or the 4072 (fully plastic).

The Database

Here's an example how to read the information provided with each coach:

Märklin 4032
DB / Type A4üm 1st Class / 11853 / 24cm / .1-.2 / 1960-1963
Same as 4027 with tail lights. Cellon windows.













The top-left corner above the picture shows the main brand (Märklin or Primex), the 4xxx-product number and the older 3xx-number if a coach has had one.

Below the picture are one or two rows of text:

Upper row: Railway / Type & Class / Coach Number / Length / Version(s) / Production Period
Lower row: Special information

As such, we can read that the Märklin 4032 is a model of a DB-coach, more specifically a Type A4üm 1st class passenger coach with a coach number of 11853. The model is 24cm in length, the photo and description is valid for versions .1 and .2 and that the coach (version) was produced between 1960 and 1963. From the lower row we can read that this model is otherwise the same as the Märklin 4027 but included tail lighting, and that the coach has cellon windows.

Other information could be whether the coach has interior fittings pre-installed or whether it belongs to a certain coach- or train-set etc. Not every single variant is present in the catalogue. The different versions have been included if the coach number, window type or other significant detail changes and of course, if the whole prototype changes. The version numbers correspond to the Koll's catalogue.

Disclaimer

I don't make any monetary or any other kind of profit whatsoever from this site. The site is a normal free blogger-page that I've created with my google-account. All the information available including the photographs taken are free-to-use for your own purposes, if you so wish. My sole intention is to share my collecting passion with others and do my small part in helping to grow the hobby. I've been building a database of my own for some time and basically just thought that there's no reason I should just keep this to myself if it can benefit others too!




So, that's it for the basics. Now enjoy! :)