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Märklin, 1859 Göppingen Germany, model railway manufacturer trains Z H0 0 1 information

Name: Märklin
Country: Germany - Göppingen
Founder: Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Märklin
Founded: 1859
Web: https://www.maerklin.com/

Scales: Z H0 0 1

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Märklin history

The origins of Marklin date back to 1859 as a manufacturer of sheet metal and tinplate toys. At the beginning of the 1890's the first miniature train was manufactured and in the following years models in scale 0, 1, 2 and 3 continued to be manufactured.

At the beginning of the 20th century work was done on the standardization of the scales for the reproduction of railway miniatures and at the beginning of the 1920's scales 2 and 3 were discontinued due to their large size.
Little by little, the manufacturing processes and finishes improved notably, affecting the finishes of the pieces, which became better and better.

When miniatures began to be made in 00 scale, the space required was greatly reduced and the rails could be mounted on a table instead of on the floor until finally the H0 scale was adopted by most of the manufacturers.

Already after the Second World War the brand continued the production of trains that most of them were exported due to the hard situation of the country. They started to work with Zinc and plastic castings and the quality of the pieces improved notably. Marklin is clear that there are two types of customers:

• Children who play with their trains.
• Adults who collect miniature reproductions and make their own models.

In 1972, the smallest mass-produced electric train in the world was presented at the Nuremberg fair under the name of mini-club, which was 220 times smaller than a real train (Z scale) and entered the Guinness Book of Records for its size and for operating uninterruptedly for 720 kilometers in 1219 hours.
In 1984 the first digital control system was launched.

In these years sales stagnated because they focused on the adult collector market and when the two Germanies were reunified took the opportunity to launch sales to home users and the youngest of the house.

Over the years they had to modernize their manufacturing processes and eliminate products from their catalogs to reduce delivery times as they had to compete with electronic toys and video games and it was not until Christmas 2003 that they recovered their sales thanks to the Harry Potter train and some starter boxes with high speed trains and classic models.

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