This is a translated version of Georg Eiermann's excellent magazine to English .

It's all in there: Locomotives, especially steam locomotives, are always popular. The wheels determine the scale, and if it has to be a narrow-gauge steam locomotive and, as with Märklin, there were no narrow perforated strips in the programme, it becomes difficult. But it can be done. If you take 100 year old advertising models or catalogue illustrations as a model and build in Märklin pre-war colours, you need a lot of skill and enough parts to build a whole range of cranes at the same time.

>From his exotic drawer, Urs shows us an Italian box from the immediate post-war period, which is unusually elaborate and unfortunately quickly disappeared again.

It is rare to see models from the Märklin orange series and when you do, they are usually based on the instructions. A bulldozer with an astonishing number of play options is presented here.

We have already seen the Robodog. But now comes another small Meccano dog, called Astrodog, which contains a less elaborate gearbox but is more entertaining to watch. He was very popular at the Meccano exhibition in Skegness.

And it is precisely this exhibition in England that is the subject of a long photo report at the end with many, but by no means all, of the models.

My thanks go to all the authors, photographers and of course to Gert Udtke, the reliable tracker of spelling mistakes, clumsy choice of words and similar infelicities.