Stadtilm metal goods factory
The VEB Metallwarenfabrik Stadtilm was an East German company, which in the GDR only among other manufacturers of model trains of s scale was.
history
Carl Liebmann founded the company Carl Liebmann Metallwerke in Stadtilm in 1942 , which manufactured parts as an armaments company for the Thuringian aircraft industry. Typical peace products were made after 1945. The development and manufacture of aircraft parts was resumed under the Soviet occupation. In 1948 the Soviet Union surprisingly dismantled the entire rebuilt highly developed Thuringian aircraft industry and relocated it to the Soviet Union. Carl Liebmann looked for a replacement production and found it - at the suggestion of the workforce - in the toy train in gauge 0. The first products were already shown at the spring trade fair in Leipzig in 1949. Production developed rapidly, innovations flowed directly into production, which resulted in an unmanageable variety of detailed solutions.
At the end of 1952, Carl Liebmann had to flee the GDR with his family. The repression against entrepreneurs had increased. The company was transferred to VEB (K) Metallwarenfabrik Stadtilm in 1953. The railway was completely redeveloped and improved. Now the models were much more prototypical and made of black plate. A very prototypical new track system was created.
Track S
From 1956, production of the S- scale models began in Stadtilm parallel to the 0 gauge . So new developments were made, e.g. B. the locomotive housing was made of plastic using an injection molding process. The sleepers were made of cardboard. A prototypical two-rail operation avoided the previously compulsory, but hated by "real" model railroaders, middle conductor rail.
The (few) locomotives were partly built in two versions: with a 12 volt or with a 4.5 volt DC motor. The former were operated with a transformer, the latter with a flat battery or a power supply unit. Right from the start of production, the housings of all traction vehicles were made of plastic and the chassis made of metal. The freight and passenger cars were made of sheet metal, only the wheel discs, buffers and couplings were made of plastic. The wagons were mainly made of sheet metal of varying quality. These material fluctuations meant that the conventional lithography process could not be used. Instead, the wagons were first painted and later provided with decals. There were also various inaccuracies here, so that the colors used were very different and the decals were sometimes stuck on in the wrong place or even upside down.
In 1964, the production of the S gauge toy train in Stadtilm was stopped. On May 1, 1964, the previously independent company was taken over by VEB joint shaft factory Stadtilm, today joint shaft factory GEWES GmbH. Before that, there were sales difficulties and an investment backlog due to wear and tear on tools and a lack of good skilled workers.
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Coordinates: 50 ° 46 ′ 33.6 ″ N , 11 ° 5 ′ 6 ″ E