Märklin
The beginning
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In 1859, when tin smith Theodor Friedrich Wilhelm Märklin (1817-1866) made his decision to start producing doll's house accessories of lacquered tinplate, you can be sure he had no idea he was founding a firm of world renown. It's possible the idea came from his second wife Caroline (1826-1893), whom he had married the same year he made his fateful decision in the royal Württemberg borough of Göppingen, where he had lived since 1840.
At any rate Caroline, a disciple of political economist Friedrich List, brought great energy and a brilliant talent for organization into building up the business. |
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Just a few years later they had to move into biggerliving and working premises because of demand for their products.
The death - in an accident - of the firm's founder in 1866 was a severe blow, and only the hard work and determination of his widow kept the company from collapse. She wanted to keep the business going for her three sons and so, for twenty years, she put up with extreme hardship.
Caroline remarried in 1868, but the help she had hoped for in bearing the burden never came.
Unhappily for her, the children seemed to have no interest in the toy business. It was not untilafter the death of his stepfather that one of the sons, Eugen Märklin (1861-1947) picked up thethreads - albeit only as a side-line, since he had a well-paid job elsewhere, as had his brothers.
Finally though, on 1st March 1888, he decided with his brother Karl to found an unlimited trading company, and to incorporate their parents' business in this.
The years that followed, like those that had gone, were not free from worries about the company's existence. But optimism, an inherited determination and far-sighted business sense enabled Eugen Märklin to over-come the difficult times. It has to be noted, too, that without the hard work and encouraging help of his wife, the early phase of building up the business would not have gone so successfully. It was during this time that Eugen Märklin made the astute andin the best sense -fateful decision in 1891 to take over the Ludwig Lutz tinplate toy factory in Ellwangen, a company whose products had been prized for decades at home and abroad because of their beauty. (Gradually, because of old-fashioned production and marketing methods, Lutz had become unable to compete effectively). The era of hand-made products was over. Eugen Märklin offered the Lutz work force the chance of resettling in Göppingen and thus keeping their jobs -something which showed a sense of social responsibility which in those days was far from being a matter of course. The know-how which long-serving and experienced staff specialists brought with them was, of course, a benefit to the company. Eugen Märklin clearly recognized not only the weaknesses of Lutz production methods but also their strong points, and for his own business he found a middle road between cheap mechanical mass production with lithographic printing and costly, hand-made production by craftsmen. And that's how it stayed - give or take occasional changes in stress on certain products - until the end of the tinplate era.
Extending the product range with Lutz articles affected first and foremost technical toys. For a while these continued to be produced as before, but soon they became "märklinized". The takeover of the Ellwangen firm played no small part in the rapid rise of the Göppingen company which, from 1892 onwards, called itself "Märklin Bros. & Co.". By then another associate had been won over - Emil Friz of Plochingen, who became a joint owner along with Eugen Märklin Märklin had caused a stir at the Leipzig Spring Fair by putting on show a clock-work-driven train that ran on rails. True, there had already been toy trains which ran on their own tracks. Märklin's success lay in the novelty of offering a whole layout system which could be added to piece by piece and with rails of a gauge which enabled a degree of standardization - an idea which other manufacturers soon latched onto.
A printed catalogue from 1895 still clearly shows a preponderance of traditional Märklin products - that is "Equipment for children's kitchens etc.". Five years later the range of railroad and other technical toy products had greatly broadened. Already in those days stress was being placed on a generous choice of accessories - something kept for decades- This broad choice has proved a major reason behind the world wide popularity of the Märklin railroad.
The business's rapid expansion meant that it had to move in 1895 into larger premises -
Marktgasse 21. Five years later these had already proved too small and so a new building with 6,000 square meters of floor space on the various stories was built in Stuttgarter Strasse. The company moved in to the new facilities in 1900. The high investment needed to increase production meant more capital had to be pumped into the firm. Thus, on May 1st 1907, Richard Safft came as a further partner to the company which, from 1908, traded under the name "Märklin Bros. & Cie".
Since the turn of the century large printed catalogues were produced every four or five years - each with annual supplements -which were sent out not to customers but to dealers. Customer catalogues were not introduced until 1924. A look at the 1904 and 1909 editions shows the explosive growth in range of products. As Eugen Märklin was to describe later, his partner Emil Friz had the ambition of becoming "the first and biggest toy factory in the world".
As has already been mentioned, before the First World War and also later, Märklin by no means produced just model railroads. There is hardly an article from the realm of technical toys and doll's accessories which you could imagine not having been produced by Märklin over the past 140 years.
A special problem lay in the seasonal nature of the toy trade, something which has always
existed. It was for this reason that Eugen Märklin had already been producing and distributing household products before 1891, and why later a certain part of the company's range consisted of "summer articles". In 1928 there was even a summer catalogue. In 1911 a six-story, 110 meter-long company headquarters was built along the Stuttgarter Strasse. Today it is still one of Göppingen's most imposing buildings. By 1914 the number of employees had risen to 600. Then came the First World War - an event which proved for
Märklin, like many another firms, a painful break. Many of the specialist staff were called up, and only a few returned. Production was perforce switched to "wartime articles" and the firm's spectacular growth - particularly in the export field -was brought to an abrupt halt. Suddenly access to foreign markets was cut and there was no customer for part of the products which had been made specially to the requirements of the target countries.
Faced with this predicament it proved a boon that - in contrast to other toy manufacturers - the firm had not neglected the home market and thus survived the difficult post-war era relatively well. Even so, various changes of course proved necessary after 1920 in both the business and the technical fields. The switch from an unlimited trading company to a limited liability company - originally planned for tax purposes - was deemed a necessity after the death of Emil Friz in 1922. It. was not until four years later that his son-in-law, Max Scheerer, became the firm's third managing director. In 1923 Eugen Märklin's son Fritz joined the company, and in 1935 took over his father's position when the latter retired after 50 years.
The end of the war brought with it, too, the need for a change of direction in policy concerning what sort of models were produced. Paring down of the range meant the wide II and III gauge railroads disappeared. The development of the company's electric railroads really got going in 1925 when the 20-volt system was introduced. The model designers turned increasingly for their inspiration to the German Reichsbahn (German State Railroad) founded in 1920 for its locomotives and rolling stock, and also the whole field of accessories.
Noted toy historian Gustav Reder has called the years after 1925 those of the "Märklin Awakening" - meaning an ever-clearer tendency towards producing true-to-life models, the first steps on the road to real model railroads. Märklin's "Reichsbahn era" between 1927 and 1939 brought a whole fresh impetus. By 1929 the number of employees had risen to 900. At the beginning of the 1930s the Bing company ceased toy production, automatically making Märklin the market leader as the Nuremberg company of Karl Bub - with its cheap mass production - was not seen as a serious competitor.
140 Years of Märklin >> A Byword For Model Railroads
It was during these years that the term "Märklin railroads" became a byword for model trains among the public at large. For various reasons, including increasing controls on raw materials, the years after 1935 brought renewed paring down and reorienting of the product range. Toys not part of the railroad products were cut back more and more, and the whole range of gauge 1 products was given up in favor of an "OO gauge miniature railroad" - the name given to the table-mounted railroad introduced in 1935. This novelty, available as a ready-integrated system, rapidly became so popular that by 1939 it already had an extensive program. Märklin began using new technical procedures such as zinc die casting, first in locomotives, coach trucks, wheels and accessories. Between 1948 and 1955 freight cars were also produced completely under this method.
140 Years of Märklin >> From Tinplate To Plastics
The Second World War brought a new enforced break in toy production. Mercifully the firm's production plant escaped any direct effects of war. Richard Safft died in 1945 and Eugen Märklin in 1947. Herbert Safft took his father's place as managing director. Soon after the war ended model railroad production started up again, at first for export only. While the OO/HO range was extended as fast as possible, O-gauge models saw greatly limited production. In 1950 manufacture of the "wide-tracks" in lacquered tinplate stopped altogether. The tinplate era was at an end. Plastics largely took over in the range of materials used. Now the company dedicated itself almost exclusively to developing and perfecting the HO railroads which established themselves equally as trains to play with ("because the system's so clear" as the German advertising said) and as first-rate models. This dual strategy - seen through largely by the efforts of Fritz Märklin before his death in 1961 -clearly helped towards the world wide success enjoyed by Märklin's HO railroads.
It's been a long road from handmade tin-plate toys to today's mass production in which the hand worker still plays an indispensable role. Before locos and cars make their appearance in the shop window or shelf, they have a two-year route to travel through the various production stages.
It starts in the design shop. Here the results of surveys - in the Märklin Magazine, for instance (it appears regularly in German) - are evaluated, the latest projects of the national railroad and railroad companies are looked at, the designs of the loco and car manufacturers examined, and then all are weighed up in the context of Märklin's medium- and long-term policies, what chances a new product would have on the market and whether it can be viably produced with the necessary accuracy to the prototype.
However, what the customer has to say is not always clear. While young railroad enthusiasts who no longer see any steam engines "live" on the rails can go into raptures about a smartlooking diesel racing through a tunnel at 125 miles an hour, the older generation will hanker with nostalgia-glazed looks after a true-to-life model of a Prussian P8, seeking lovingly but uncompromisingly to establish whether there are as many rivets depicted on the body of the locomotive as there were on the original. So all the alternatives which present themselves in weighing up such considerations are duly discussed by the builders and technicians at the factory, until the green light is given by the management.
Meticulous Like A Sleuth
Using photos and manufacturers' plans which - especially with historic models - are to be
uncovered only with the meticulousness of a sleuth - the research and development department gets down to designing the product and its components. The national railroads and the railroad companies play only a secondary role in acquiring plans, however. Märklin's engineers turn for the most part directly to the manufacturing works which then - with the agreement of the consignor national railroads and companies - make the blueprints available.
It was quite different, though, in developing the "steam loco that never was" - Märklin model 3102, the super heavy wartime locomotive from the Borsig works. This colossus was intended for military transportation to the Urals but never materialized because the tide of war turned against the consignor. Thirty years later Märklin wanted to build Europe's biggest-ever loco - and its' subsequent success proved the managers right. But the plans, naturally enough, were hardly to be found in the "to be resubmitted" tray of the German Federal Railroad. The railroad did help the Märklin searchers in the quest, though, and eventually the blueprints for the Mallettype loco were discovered in a small technical file.
Once the plans and drawings are ready for a miniature project, the research and development department makes the first brass models which are then required to prove their functional worth in extensive trials on testbeds and special facilities. After this those responsible meet again in conference to decide whether to give the go-ahead.
The machine shop then gets down to designing the tools and molds and other mechanical
requirements for production. Unlike with, say, the automobile industry, all the tools which will eventually be involved in coachwork production are designed and constructed by Märklin itself.
Here special precision is the rule, because the quality of molds and tools required to last for production series of several hundred thousand will, in the long run, determine not just the appearance of the product but also its durability.
The Pilot Run Begins
Once the plans are ready, the mold- and tool-makers take their turn. With minute attention to detail they get down to building the tools which will already be "pinpointing" the individual components of such details as the Heusinger valve gear of a steam loco or faithfully-reproduced cabling atop a modern electric loco. The pilot run is then ready. Here, before the main production begins the quality control department must first have its say. It checks the components and the first complete models for operation and "look". Dirty window casings?
Unsightly seams between parts produced by different machines? Nothing escapes the schooled eyes of the quality control specialists. Not so rarely does it happen that they will reject a passenger car superstructure in the Mini-club range because a series number has "slipped upwards".
At last, the pilot run is given the go-ahead. This is the point when the work of the production
planning department pays off. They are responsible for the painstaking schedules involved in preparing machine tools, for ensuring bulk dyed plastic is delivered on time, or for the final assembly of motors. Our new locomotive which has just passed its first test can only go into production if its scheduling fits in with the factory's overall work. For this, data processing plays a key role in helping the planners. Once the schedule is finally prepared, "Day X" is now not to far away: Full production can begin.
First stop is the die casting shop. Loco body, chassis and wheels are cast independently of each other. At the same time, in the plastic molding shop, work goes ahead on the remaining body components. The highest precision has to be the rule in the turning shop. Gear wheels which still guarantee the almost legendary Märklin quality even after thousands of working hours, bevel gears and the extremely fine Mini-club wheels acquire their form here. The cast wheels for HO and gauge 1 locos are finished here, too.
Painting - Automatic And By Hand
In order to ensure that the paint holds securely, the individual zinc die cast units are electrophosphated.
Hundreds of parts are dipped simultaneously in the various chemical baths, secured on special mountings. In the paint shop, linked spraying machines apply the basic colors of locos and cars where these are not already of dyed plastic. Against this, the spray gun operators need a practiced hand and the right kind of practice for painting individual sections of the loco bodies. And because not all color can be applied by spraying or printing, skilled women's hands in the manual paint shop give the final touch to body and chassis. The print shop, finally, adds the lines and serial numbers and all the remaining insignia, etched with the same precision as all the other processes.
When the components of our loco have got this far, it's time for final assembly - a procedure with so many different demands from model to model that normally it does not lend itself to automation. Here, again, it's a question of tireless work by hand, applying realistic detail to the loco body or sub frame. Here you only have to think of the minute attention to detail in the Heusinger valve-gear of the Mini-club class 86 steam locomotive, or the connecting rods of the Crocodile. The same applies to the mounted tubes on the HO steam locos or the way couplers are reproduced on the 1 Gauge locos. In assembling the sub frames, the raw wheel frames are turned into high precision trucks. Motor parts are put together here, too.
Again And Again: Quality Control
At last comes final assembly. The completed components are brought together into the Märklin model. Once it "stands", it is put through a long-distance run, first on test beds for motor and switching. Every model that arrives at the dealer's has already undergone many switching and running tests. On top of these come trips over test routes featuring all the "tricks" that can be built using the K and M track programs. Models that fail to come up to scratch under the controller's critical eye are ruthlessly sorted out. External details are also given a final check here, and only then is the loco allowed out for packing and storing in the multifixture warehouse, from which it starts its journey to anywhere in the world.
