TrainWorldTV tour of Marklin and LGB booth at a Toy Fair in Nuremberg Germany

I have a whole lot of Marklin Z, HO, and Large Scale (#1 gauge), as well as a good amount of LGB. Hard to beat the quality of either of those lines.

I have my dads Marklin from the 70's and some LGB equipment from the 90's and early 2000's.  The German made products are really high quality.  I originally started with G-Gauge LGB but moved to O-gauge because of cost.  It is unfortunate that they outsourced some of the production to China now.  Does LGB or Marklin still have manufacturing in Germany or any other countries in Europe?

I believe Marklin/LGB production was moved out of China or should be almost out soon if not already, but that was over a year ago when i have heard that.  I have had items come in with labels in Hungary.  The German made items are really made well and the new production is done well also even though not a fan of the China made items compared to the European made.  If you bought mainly Euro style trains they were still made in Europe while most of the US production was moved to China late when LGB was still around.  Sad that they are gone, but at least Marklin still makes a few items each year and should be all manufactured in Hungary.

All of the Marlin and LGB items I've purchased in the past year or so have been made in Europe. That's one of the reasons I keep buying them.

 

That is good to here.  Hopefully my current Hobbyshop in town will start carrying more LGB items again.  

The Maerklin factory that makes the large scale trains (Maerklin gauge one and LGB) is located in Gyor Hungary.  I don't know of any production left in China. Before it went bankrupt LGB tried some production in China.  I found these trains to be nice, although the quality control wasn't up to the German standards.  Few, if any locomotives were made in China, limiting production to freight cars. 

Maerklin would rather make LGB in Hungary, which in its own right is a lower cost country compared to the former west German territory where LGB was located.  As such, quality control is an issue.  Sice the move to Hungary, LGB product has been plagued with quality control issues including: smeared paint, motor block failure and improperly assembled cars.  LGB's recent release of a German e10 was a fiasco, with the motor blocks in all the models failing. LGB was forced to design and release new ones for the ill fated models.

The good news is that lgb trains are still quite durable and some of the best runners around. They also still show a knack for excellent engineering. But I can't help feel that the passion and love the original family run company put into its trains is long gone.

Hopefully they will work through some of the quality control issues.  Does LGB have any models with new tooling coming out?

Yes.  Maerklin has really ramped up production at LGB with several locomotives with new tooling and lots of great repaints and variants of old engines.  The latest and biggest new release was new multiple unit rail cars of the rhb railroad of Switzerland.  Plenty of new cars too. For Switzerland they just released a larger style of tank car and should be coming out with the wood side four axle boxcars soon.   That's just to name a few of the new items. 

Nothing new for the US market though.  I think Maerklin is trying to focus on the European market, where they are much more competitive.  In general, the rhb railroad of Switzerland gets most of the attention, with German narrow gauge getting most if the rest.  LGB also is releasing new models of Classic German standard gauge locos, but these are lower budget offerings meant to compete with Piko and not up to the quality of the narrow gauge offerings.

I noticed that Marklin and LGB have not developed new American prototype tooling in a while. Then again LGB's specific scale size is really only good for narrow gauge prototypes.  I think they have done many of the major prototypes of narrow gauge trains in the US.  What dealers still sell LGB in the US?  It seems like when they went bankrupt many dealers stopped selling them. I was just on Trainworld's website looking at their LGB inventory and their pricing and I am shocked how O-Gauge really is not much cheaper then G-Gauge anymore. A LGB G-Scale freight car is around the same price as most full scale O-gauge freight cars and not much more expensive then the semi scale ones.  I remember 15 years ago most of MTH Railking freight cars I was getting were around half the price or less then a LGB G-Gauge Freight car.  Now the gap is alot closer.

Walters is the current US distributor for LGB, but they can be pricey.  We usually buy from independent importers, like Train Li.  For already released LGB items some of the train auction websites are places to get good deals. 

As for US prototypes, it's only recently that Maerklin began producing US LGB prototypes again.  Most of these are just re releases of models from the 90s, at a much higher price. 

There are still some US narrow gauge prototypes that would fit in with the LGB program.  For example, after making a large number of white pass items, they never made the Canadian cab version of the mlws or the shovel nose ge's.

I guess having a middle man instead of being able to import directly from LGB would raise the cost. 

Those would be some cool prototypes to model but it would require some new tooling investments.  I think the Canadian cab MLW locomotive would be more likely because then they could also offer it with some fantasy paint schemes of US class 1 railroads on it because it has a wide cab like most modern locomotives in North America. 

Nice to see the "Bianco" family at the Nurnberg Toy Fair.

 

As for Marklin, well under the new ownership of father & son Sieber, the present and future seem to slowly look brighter than the "dark" years of 2007-2013.

 

They just opened (October 2014) a new 65000 sq ft factory in Gyor/Hungary at a cost of US $ 11 millions.

This second factory in Gyor will help increase production, faster delivery time and was indeed a result of the total return from the Asia production to Europe. This will mostly be seem in the LGB, Minitrix line with more products and also in the Scale 1, were products wait has been very long in the last couple of year.

Quality is improving, specialy on the LGB front..as Glen mentionned the E10 release was problematic (somehow the same issue as the 2008 release of the V200) but at least recall were issued and issues were rapidely corrected (at 0 cost for the end user).

Pictures and video of the Grand opening can be seen on the following link and give a good view on how a 21st century "toy trains" factory look like. (it's only available in German)

 

http://www.maerklin.de/de/serv...oeffnung_ungarn.html

 

The German factory in Goppingen is still their main location for R&D, marketing, tooling, die-cast production, high end products assembly and apprentices formations (someone need to form the future generations of model trains craft women and men).

They also have plan to rewanp the site of Goppingen with a new and larger Museum, new interactive factory tour, larger layout display (wunderland style) but this will be a few years in the making.

 

Will see how all work out for them..

 

On the LGB lacking of newly tooled US models..it's to understand that when a company in under bankruptcy protection, they will not invest the little they can into a market who was in total colapse since 2008...pretty sure that new products will be offered in the near future.

In the meantime take a good look a the Piko G offering, yes they are slightly simpler than LGB, but are of great quality and value.

 

A quick side note (off topic) for Glen, you should be pleased with the announcement of ESU entering the G market with a superb model of the RhB Abe 4/4 II railcar (yes these are the cancelled one from KISS) with a terrific sound/ light package, as well as an excellent model of the RhB ballast car.

 

Sincerely,

PW

Here are some pictures from the trip

 

https://www.facebook.com/media...772009474&type=1

Lafondue,

Thanks for the info about esu.  I had no idea they were getting into g, or in this case IIm scale. I also did not know kiss had cancelled the Abe 44ii rail cars.  My dad actually had some on order. 

With both brawa and now kiss out of the plastic large scale market it's good to see someone else coming in.  If course, train line 45 also has some great German offerings.  Unfortunately, their Swiss passenger cars left a lot to be desired, but they are trying the Swiss market again with a ge 4 6 boxcab.  I hope it works out well, since it's always been a favorite of mine. 

I also did not know about the new factory, I suspect I'll hear about it in big magazine.

Looked like a fun trip.  Makes me want to go to Germany in the near future. 

 

LGB lost their share of the US outline narrow gauge market by standing pat on what few near-scale items they offered while occasionally offering toys while Bachmanntrains went out and produced good scale models in F scale.

 

They could have followed kitbashers'examples and produced a good USstyle narrow gauge 2-8-0, but they never did.

 

After a while I felt abandoned and discouraged and changed scales.

 

I still have some Marklin HO trains from my youth. Nice to see the latest from them.

-Greg