Saturday near my place (in the Netherlands) I found and bought a Marx boxed Commodore Vanderbilt set from a Belgian dealer. The set had the CV locomotive and tinplate tender, 3 Montclair Pullmans, 1 Bogota Pullman and an Observation car. All 5 cars are lighted. The set included a Marx model no 1009 transformer for 220 volts but no rail. The set also included the Marx printed 4 page instructions but also a version of these instructions translated in Dutch! This translated instructions looked officially made and used correct language (No google translate ;-) I bought the set since I liked the observation that I had never seen before (you do not find much Marx over-here). At home I noticed that the observation and Pullman had lithographed red frames; I already had a CV set, the Pullman with that set had black frames. I do have a couple of questions that you might have some answers for:
Has there been an official Marx representative in Netherlands or Belgium which could explain the instructions in Dutch?
Is the 220 transformer made specially for Europe? As far as I know you have 110 volts in the USA.
Was it normal to have 3 Pullmans with the same name in a set?
The CV loco is electric but has a clockwork shell; of course this could have been done by the previous owner but the loco looks further original and not tampered with?
Further to be noted: the original instructions mentions: "A list of nine DON'TS for this train" The Dutch translation has 10 don'ts!
I added some pictures.
NB: I payed the equivalent of $100 for this set; is that be reasonable?
Regards
Fred
