Restoration Of Two Old Märklin BR 800 (#TM 800) Tank Engines

Restoration? Better say that two new engines were assembled of restored old parts.

The whole thing started with an Ebay auction. There, a consist of severel shells an chassis of the old Märklin BR 80 model were offered, containing seven shells and three chassis. This was the old model, which was a little bit "oversized", compared with the scale model produced later on by Märklin. In the 1950ies, this model was still offered under the catalog number "TM 800".

I finally won the acution, paid it, and shortly after that the parcel arrived. However, if one bids on such "scrap auction", one doesn't know exactly what will await him - it can be a bad or a good surprise. Luckily, it was a good surprise, because one of the shell met a condition where the paint was worn at several edges, but still good enough to restore it, in fact, a restoration was even the the better choice than a new paintwork.

Because I had the original Märklin colour, I could start at once restoring the shell. First of all, it had to be cleaned, after years or decades in a basement or on an attic, it had been "collected" a lot of dust and dirt.

Then I thinned the colour intensly and started to paint the edges where the original paint was worn. This job had to be repeated a few times. This method does certainly requiere more work and time, but one doesn't see that the paint has been repaird afterwards. One by one, all damages to the original paintwork were repaired. After this job had been finished and the paint had dried, I took a very fine brush an painted the elevated numbers, and railings, in silver. Finally, the gangplanks got red paint.

Two of the chassises were in a usable condition, the third one could be restored too, however the missing wheels would have had to be replaced. Nevertheless, the both usable ones had no motors left, and other parts werde missing too. So I choosed the one with all gears complete, and, luckily, I had the missing motors "in stock". However, a cleaning was quite necessary to remove all dirt and old oil.

So I could assemble the first locomotive and put it into service. You can see it on the pictures below. The first picture (shown above) shows the shell just before restoration began. Some final works still had to be done when the second and third picture were taken. However, most part of the work was finished and the loco was running on the layot - and it runs very smoothly. 

The second loco should get the "photographic paint" of the DRG era. The right colour is RAL 7011.

So,  Ip ut the shell into Aceton dissolver. The old paintwork was removed quite effective, allthough I had to use a brush for finally removing some remnants of the old paint. The I gave the compononts away for paint-spraying. The result simply looks great!

back