MarWick – A collaboration between Mark’s Trains and Wickness Models

This page attempts to explain the relationship between Mark’s Trains and Wickness Models and the formation of the name MarWick. You can visit these two websites by clicking on the appropriate logo below, clicking a logo will allow you to jump from one site to the other while browsing. You wont lose your place here on this page as the link to the other website opens in a new tab/window.

MarWick was formed in 2017 as a collaboration between Mark’s Trains and Wickness Models. Marks Trains and Wickness Models work together to provide you with many services.

Douglas at Wickness Models offers a quality DCC fitting service established over many years of trading. He also offers a range of digital model railway equipment to cover all budgets. The range of N, OO and O gauge equipment and accessories he stocks has been selected through experience and is specifically based on quality at all levels of the market. Wickness Models is a specialist in N gauge conversions of older Farish and Dapol locomotives. Douglas also has a specialism for Union Mills DCC conversions where he is somewhat of an expert in this particular area through his years of experience. For people building and wiring their own DCC layouts and carrying out their own DCC conversions, Wickness Models offer a range of equipment to cover all budgets.

Mark at Marks Trains offers a high quality DCC conversion service and he undertakes specialist commissions and weathering work. He has an engineering background and specialises in N gauge conversions where a chassis may need milling or more intricate work such as installing directional lights – although sometimes a time consuming piece of work he enjoys the outcome of his efforts. He is somewhat of an expert when it comes to electronics, having designed printed circuit boards and created electronic circuits in the past. He has turned his electronic and mechanical engineering experience towards his passion of working on model railways, and still enjoys the engineering aspects of the industry such as working on N gauge & O gauge locomotives which sometimes requires a degree of engineering. Mark’s Trains offers a range of DCC decoders to cater for all budgets in N, OO and O scales.

MarWick was formed in 2017 when both Mark and Douglas realised they both needed a good stock of Brush Insulating Sleeves as both had a large amount of DCC conversions to undertake on Graham Farish Poole chassis locomotives. Unfortunately there were no sleeves available from their suppliers for many months, so they had decided to pool their resources to design and implement the manufacture of the MarWick Brush Insulating Sleeve. This meant they had thousands of sleeves between them to undertake the conversions and which also could then go on general sale to help others convert their locomotives. As the sleeves were a joint project they decided to amalgamate their business names to form the brand ‘MarWick’, however the formation of MarWick is only a working partnership between both businesses – it is not in any way a legal business partnership and both businesses operate in their own separate manner.

Over the coming months Mark took on Douglas’ sound projects with the aim of upgrading them to utilise the latest advances in sound decoder technology and logical programming. The upgraded sound projects have been renamed to ‘MarWick Soundscape with RealDrive’, where previously they were named ‘Wickness Models Soundscape’ projects. Mark and Douglas pooled their efforts to start expanding the existing sound project library where Mark currently undertakes new field sound recordings, creates the new projects and upgrades the existing project library as part of the plans to expand the sound library, to include steam locomotives and multiple units as well as strengthen the current diesel and electric fleet. Douglas undertakes field testing on the new projects to ensure seamless operation, produce feedback if any problems are found and therefore providing their customers with high quality sound projects.

Explore MarWick Soundscape with RealDrive On ESU Loksound v4 Decoders – More RealDrive versions being upgraded regularly, browse the Soundscape Decoders link below to find them.

Soundscape Decoders | Soundscape Reblow Service | Soundscape Downloads

Mark has created new and improved sound bulletins for the upgraded and new sound projects, with the customers needs placed first. New function key assignments on RealDrive projects are organised to be more consistent throughout the range of sound projects; Diesel and Electric projects will have the same mapping to be consistent with each other, and Steam projects will have their own consistent function mapping in place. This will make it easier to operate sound decoders across the ‘MarWick Soundscape with RealDrive’ range. Comprehensive installation instructions are included for those who want to convert their own locomotives, including wire allocation for prototypical lights where the model has directional lights installed and also decoder diagrams for stay-alive circuits. There’s also a list of the various functions that are available on the projects, explaining the nature of the function and if it’s an advanced function with logic programming behind it; such as random sounds allocated to a single function key. An example of the new sound bulletins can be seen in the image below, or you can read through an example here.

Creating sound projects is almost a full time job in itself, so the upgrades and new releases are taking time to complete but they are progressing well! Mark’s Trains and Wickness Models now use the library of sound projects between themselves under the new brand of MarWick. These projects are available for sale on both websites, just click on the link below the banner above.

So what does the future hold for MarWick? Well, there are plans in place to port over the existing sound projects which are currently programmed on ESU decoders, to include the full range of Zimo sound decoders. This will provide a larger range of available sound decoders and also provides greater flexibility. There’s always that one job where the ESU LokSound V4 Micro decoder won’t fit inside a locomotive, but in this instance the Zimo MX648 provides the perfect solution to the problem. There are also customers who prefer a Zimo decoder instead because the rest of their locomotives are fitted with this brand too, or vice versa… MarWick would like to offer that choice to their customers, so this will be a massive improvement. There are other plans in the pipeline for MarWick, but nothing set in concrete at present.

By browsing between the two sites we hope that you can find all you are looking for and please remember that if you can’t find the product you are seeking to get in touch, between us we can source most DCC equipment in the UK for you, equally we can accommodate almost any DCC conversion.

Equipment in the UK is largely dependent on supply from either Europe or the United States, often the UK retailers will run low on certain items based on availability and this can be frustrating, remember that we can source almost anything you need, and we will give you an accurate estimate on timescales where equipment is in short supply.