140 Years of Märklin >> Märklin Production Today 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 smart-looking 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. 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 Mallet-type 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. 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. 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. |