Railroading with
The Märklin Diary of a 44 yr old Kid

This is a used V200 056 ( 3021.7 ), 1962, bought on eBay for $40.

Initially she ran ok, perhaps a bit sluggishly. When I opened the motor, I found quite a bit of gunk and the rotor was slighlty pitted. I purchased a new rotor for about $12. The reverser unit worked perfectly and the shoe appeared to be a recent replacement. She also got new traction tires and brushes. When I got the Uhlenbrock Intellibox, I decided to take her digital. I had gotten a few used Delta decoders for $10 each and decided that I would put one in her. She is not as pretty as, say, a BR 101, but, shoot, she is 40 years old and has a lot more character!

Closeup of a standard Marklin Motor.	Closeup of a standard Marklin Reverser.
I neglected to shoot any pictures when I had the motor open. When I get a chance, I will take some and post them here.
In this shot, I have removed the reverser and installed the decoder.
A generic wiring schematic of a Marklin decoder that indicates where each of the colored wires are to be soldered. I used a 15 watt iron.	A closeup of the installed decoder showing the motor parts to which to solder the wires.
The loose messy wires are tidied up with bands of dental floss
All told, she cost me around $65. It took me about 30 minutes to clean the locomotive and install the decoder. A note to the experts: I did run this lok several times using a Delta Controller and with the IB. I swear she runs much better with the IB. Does anyone have a posible explanation?