Garden Railway Forum

Today this beautiful Bing "starkstrom" loco came into the workshop.


Front bogie missing, tender wheels brittle,....
Hope the electric part works.
This will be one of the bigger overhauls.

Now there's an unusual job. Keep us posted..

Hi Aaron,

I have converted my layout last yesr to accomodate not only Märklin 64/65 and 66 System (24V AC) but also Märklin 70 (24V DC) and Starkstrom (up to 48V at the track), so now the old pretext "does not run on my layout" does not work any more and quite a few rarther cheap (as no-one runs them) Starkstrom locos found their way here.
I am now looking for someone who has a similar loco and can give me the dimensions of the missing front bogie and wheels.

Update:
She´s alive.
Running up and down the sidings.
Getting the reversing mechanism back to work was quite difficult and time-consuming.
I also found someone with a similar loco who gave me the dimensions of the front bogie. That should be easy enough to make.
Someone else had wheels and axles for the front bogie in the spares box.
All I still need is a matching tender. Ontil one is found, the current one will have to do.

With that luck so far, lets hope it holds out for the tender as well!

In 1925 there was a new law that model railway may not use more than 24 volts.
So these locos are at least 100 years old.
I love the moment when reassembly starts, just the motor inside the frames, wheels and the rest still on the bench, I switch on the power and this ancient motor comes back to life.
First slow and loud, getting faster every minute.
I usually let them run in for 15 minutes each direction before assembling the rest of the chassis.

Scrat wrote: ↑Thu Jun 26, 2025 5:41 pm
I love the moment when reassembly starts, just the motor inside the frames, wheels and the rest still on the bench, I switch on the power and this ancient motor comes back to life.
First slow and loud, getting faster every minute.

Positively poetic, Holgar, but I can definitely empathise. Very well done.

You get the same feeling with the full-size restos too..

Did the motor quiet down much over the run-in?

Old Man Aaron wrote: ↑Sat Jun 28, 2025 4:29 pm You get the same feeling with the full-size restos too..

Did the motor quiet down much over the run-in?

It did.
Vibrations are also down to a minimum, the motor now runs very quiet and the brushes hardly emit sparks any more.

Here it is behind the 24V version that also has the correct tender.
This tender is of unknown origin and will have to do until I find a correct one.

What a wonderful collection, very impressive!

I totally agree with Peter, amazing.

Next one done:
A pretty rare Märklin S64 Gotthard Locomotive, also starkstrom variant.
Bought it from a well known seller (known NOT for his knowledge) as "no function at all".
The reverser was just dirty, one wire had come losse and another wire had brittle insulation causing a short.
So after about an hour in the workshop the loco now runs.

Today I replaced the missing parts on one pantograph and a missing handrail.

Job done.

What fascinate me on this 100year old model is the maintainability:
The reverser sits on four "banana" plugs and can just be pulled upwards once the roof has been removed.
The four wires from the bogie are plugged into the underside of the loco.
Those pluga are accessible after removing the fake air reserviors.
So I could test bogie and reverse beside the loco body on the bench.

That's what (well, one reason) I love about old things. They're usually made in a sensible manner that makes repairs (relatively!) easy.

Finally some pics of the loco on the turntable:

They're some wonderful little machines.

And holy hell those headlights are - to put it politely - coarse scale.
They definitely have a strong charm to them.
I wonder if that is the original paint?

It is mostly the original paint except for the right front handrail (between the headlights) and the first pantograph.
These parts were missing and I had to make them.
I tried to match the faded/scratched paint of the original parts.

This is the first version.
The second version had the headlight sockets inside making the loco look like a box on wheels.

Finally.
We have come from this:


To this:


Bing tenders are rare. So it took quite a while to get the matching one.

Well done for persevering. Looks good.

Love to see it. A century old and doing what it was meant for.

Fine work.