Yipee! I can now officially say that I am part of the Märklin H0 world. I want to model steam era in H0. My first Märklin and H0 steam locomotive is the Baureihe (Class) 53 0002 DRG, which I have introduced and mentioned umpteen times, if you are a regular follower of my blog. The second steam locomotive is BR 74 854 DB (Deutsche Bundesbahn), which came with the digital starter set Art. 29074. This year, Märklin’s Christmas campaign “Be Little Again” offers a 80€ voucher to purchase a Märklin/Trix H0 digital starter set and other goodies.

After fixing an initial hiccup with recognizing the steam loco in the Mobile Station 2, I did a “break-in” test – basically a standard practice by modelers to run any new locomotives on both directions for 5 minutes (there is no hard rule how long it should be). The purpose is to give the motor and running gears a little “warm-up” since it has been in the package for quite some time. At the factory, each new locomotive is tested and run for a short period for quality check before being packed.

As you can see from the package, you get 12 pieces of R1 curved tracks (Art. 24130), 8 pieces of straight tracks – 4 x 172mm (Art. 24177) and 4x 188mm (Art 24188). Like any other starter set, you start with an oval track. I decided to give mine a “twist” (pun intended).

This will now be a permanent feature under our Christmas tree.