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Every boy wants a model electric train set and every father wants him to have one too. I am not talking about the toy train sets that families like to have chugging around the Christmas tree, I mean real train sets that can be extended and built upon – train sets that you can grow fanatical about and some people do, don’t they?

Some people’s childhood interest for model electric train sets becomes a life-long adult passion. This is why some of the original model electric train sets are so valuable. After all, few children could afford the prices that some early model electric train sets command.

One model electric train set producer whose products are the top of the tree with the best of them is the German company Maerklin, which began producing clockwork model trains and expandable track in 1891.

Maerklin had produced dolls’ houses first of all, but they soon realized that the model train set devotee might be like a dolls’ house owner. That is that they might want to add to their collection after their initial purchase. Therefore, Maerklin offered basic model train sets but with a whole assortment of accessories that could be added on later.

Maerklin model electric train sets are available in a selection of scales and gauges, many of which Maerklin itself defined as international standards. For instance, in 1891 Maerklin introduced the 1-5 gauge at the Leipzig Toy Fair and it was quickly accepted as the world’s standard gauge for model train sets.

It followed this up with the O gauge somewhere between 1895 and 1901; the HO scale in 1935 and the Z scale in 1972. These days, however, modern Maerklin model electric train sets are only available in Gauge 1, HO scale and Z scale.

These days it is very hard and very expensive to get hold of earlier examples of Maerklin model electric train sets. In 2005, thieves broke into the Maerklin museum in Goeppingen and stole 100 pieces of Maerklin trains and accessories – a value of 1,000,000 Euros was placed on the haul.

They were later recovered in 2005. In Philadelphia, USA, a complete Maerklin train station and accessories was sold at an international auction for $110,000, in spite of the fact that it was considered that the final selling price would be in the region of $30,000.

Maerklin were really one of the world’s top innovators in the model electric train set market for about a hundred years, but the company has fallen on difficult times. It filed for liquidation in Germany in February 2009, although a year and a day later, it returned to profitability.

In the 150 years since its foundation as a company, Maerklin has usually been at the vanguard of the ideas and technology in its area. Even today, Maerklin is still the world leader for all important gauges in the model railroad market, since no other present day manufacturer gives collectors the option of adding to existing railtracks and collections.

If you are eager to own some early Maerklin trains or accessories, you can look on Ebay, they do pop up every now and again, but do not expect to find yourself a good deal, the earlier model electric trains were all hand-painted in great detail and they rarely sell for less than $25,000.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a lot of subjects, but is presently involved with train sets for kids. If you would like to know more about train sets for kids, please go over to our website for some great offers.

Magnetic levitation or maglev for short is the method of making a vehicle, more frequently than not a train, hover above the ‘track’ and move by the use of magnets. Magnetic levitation has the potential to move trains more quickly and more quietly than traditional wheel-based trains. Surprisingly, most of the power consumed is used to conquered wind resistance at high speed, not to keep the train hovering in mid-air.

You would be forgiven for imagining that maglev is new technology, but in fact the first American patent was filed by a German inventor in America in 1907. It then took 74 years before the first commercial maglev train came into existance in 1984 in Birmingham, United Kingdom. However, that particular system became quite unreliable and it was withdrawn in 1995.

The highest recorded speed of a maglev train under test conditions was in Japan in 2003. It ran at an impressive 361 mph, but that is only 3.5 mph faster than France’s TGV, which has been in existance for four decades. The TGV’s top speed of 357.2 mph was surpassed by the Chinese Harmony Express in 2009.

However, these latter day wheeled services are based on tried and tested technology on which hundreds of billions of dollars has been spent during nearly 200 years. If more attention and money were lavished on the maglev, it would exceed conventional train speeds fairly easily.

The most flourishing maglev train in operation nowadays runs to Shanghai airport like the British one ran to Birmingham Airport. However, the similarity between the two ceases there. The British maglev travelled at up to 26 mph, whereas the Chinese, but German built, maglev runs at a top speed of 160 mph.

A lot of the early research and development was carried out in Britain by Professor Eric Laithwaite from after the Second World War to 1973, but Germany is the foremost influence on the maglev train now, although Germany is working closely with the Chinese and the Japanese to develop the technology.

One of the major stumbling blocks for maglev trains is infrastructure. Maglev trains are incompatible with conventional rail rack so they have nowhere to go. Laying new maglev track is not horribly expensive, but it is dear and would involve having two sets of incompatible rails running alongside each other for a number of decades, which would obviously take up twice as much land.

Having said that, some advancement was achieved in designing rails that could be used by both technologies but the endeavour was allowed to fall fallow.

So, the story of magnetic levitation trains began with a German inventor over a hundred years ago and although they lost track of the scheme for thirty years or so during and after the War, German scientists and engineers are back at the vanguard of this fascinating technology, which will surely supplant our traditional train and track systems in the future.

If the electricity required to run them were produced by methods other than fossil fuel, these very quiet trains would go a long way to reducing pollution in both inner cities and the countryside.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a lot of topics, but is presently concerned with train sets for kids. If you would like to know more about train sets for kids, please go over to our website for some special offers.