# MARNOLD or MARNO-POWER



## Festus (Jun 28, 2010)

*I'm hoping to find someone who has some Marnold equipment, documents, or manuals they'd like to get rid of or trade for. If so, please contact me. My garden railroad layout will eventually have more than 30 trains either running or waiting to do so and since some of them will be manually controlled, I'd love to use Marnold, because they're almost as old as me. Festus *


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## Tom Leaton (Apr 26, 2008)

Wow, get out those old issues of MR. I knew a person who had a Marn-o-Stat throttle in a home made control panel; very interesting. Good luck w/ your project.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Festus, I remember those throttles, a big lever with a huge wirewound resistor behind the panel. 

If you are going to run 30 trains in large scale, you might want to think about some type of modern remote control system, in HO it was a big deal to have 10 amps, in large scale, just a single train can be 10 amps, for example a lighted passenger train. 

Otherwise, if you want to run DC power and a bunch of trains, you are going to need multiple power blocks, could get very expensive in terms of equipment. 

Regards, Greg


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

I wonder if they were actually autotransformers, like a variac.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

I was thinking that just after I posted tom, you may be right... I nominate you for the research! 

Greg


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## Festus (Jun 28, 2010)

I ought to clarify. I plan/hope to run 30+ trains on my layout (The MIRR) but I'll have more than 10 separate tracks. Some will be manual, and some will be automatically controlled. I love Marnold equipment and that handle makes it look like the real thing, and the kids love it. RR Concepts has been nice, informative, and eager to answer questions about their products, so several of my tracks will be automatically controlled by RR Concepts. The mainline and inner-mainline are both up in the air. They will both have 4-5 passing sidings so I can run lots of trains on them and will need automatic controls, like DCC or RR Concepts. I have an MRC Power G, so I have 10 amps, plus an Aristo-Craft CRE 55470 walk around controller that ought to connect to the other leads. The rest I'm unsure of, but Marnold will definitely be in several places. My mainline has one 60' straight section but when I put my Aristo 2-8-8-2 UP Mallet on there with 15 cars, it'll be a minimum of 25' and probably more like 30' which is half the length of the straightaway. And if I want to go for 25 cars, it goes up to at least 42 feet. All of my sidings will be about 25' so I'll have to limit all my trains to that length if I want to automate it. This hobby is lots of fun so I hope you experts don't mind a few questions from time to time so I can avoid mistakes. And how do you post photos in these things? Besides G scale, I'll have O scale running around my 3,000 gallon pond, and a very small circle around a half whiskey barrel nearby. Any suggestions will be most welcome. And if anyone has or hears about Marnold equipment for sale, let me know. FESTUS


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## Dr Rivet (Jan 5, 2008)

Festus 

IIRC the Maro-stat was not a variac, but a typical resistance coil rated at around 90 ohms. Since they were typically for H0 [and maybe 0] they were designed for continuous loads of 12-16 volts and 4 or 5 amps. Put a large scale passenger train with 3 or 4 locos and 10 lighted passenger cars drawing 10-12 amps and I think the coil will be toast in short order. Greg can follow up with his EE view [I hope].


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## Torby (Jan 2, 2008)

Well. If you like the look of the unit, perhaps you want to gut it and put something more modern inside and maintain the look & feel. 

How crafty are you?


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Yep, 5 amp capacity will just limit you... you can run a train on 5 amps with light grades, might be marginal. 

Maybe the marnold could be used as a control for a larger controller. 

I'd investigate this first. 

If it can't work, then tune your locos and railroad for 4-5 amps. It would be good to research the wattage capability of the marnold throttle. 

Greg


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