Watching this you could be forgiven for thinking John Lewis have started selling model trains.
Watch Märklin’s 2018 Christmas advert below.
Two minutes of feel good, family viewing to rival John Lewis’s legendary Christmas ads. It cleverly plays on all the same tropes and deploys the same psychological hooks to tug on the heart-strings and get everyone yearning for a train set!
All it lacks is soppy music by Ellie Goulding, John Lennon or Lily Allen.
The ‘movie’ tells the story of an old man charged with maintaining a train station in the depths of bitter winter. We watch as the old man shovels snow and diligently performs his hard, exhausting, work. His only comfort, photos his grandson and a small pocket watch. He counts down the days to Christmas when a steam locomotive arrives to carry him home to family for the holidays. As he boards the train, the camera pans back to reveal we’ve actually been watching a model railway in the grandson’s room. The boy stands over it, imagining his grandfather.
Glorious isn’t it!
Atmospheric, nostalgic and beautifully produced and it’s bound to sell an engine shed’s worth of train sets this Christmas.
But why aren’t Hornby doing this?
Come on Hornby, let’s see you come up with something similar!
Andy is a lifelong modeler, writer, and founder of modelrailwayengineer.com. He has been building model railways, dioramas, and miniatures for over 20 years. His passion for model making and railways began when he was a child, building his first layout at the age of seven.
Andy’s particular passion is making scenery and structures in 4mm scale, which he sells commercially. He is particularly interested in modelling the railways of South West England during the late Victorian/early Edwardian era, although he also enjoys making sci-fi and fantasy figures and dioramas. His website has won several awards, and he is a member of MERG (Model Railway Electronics Group) and the 009 Society.
When not making models, Andy lives in Surrey with his wife and teenage son. Other interests include history, science fiction, photography, and programming. Read more about Andy.