I definitely come from a "collectors" family :) Many generations in our family were close related to iron road as the railroad was once called. We are all big railroad fans, beginning with my grandfather, who spent all of his life driving all kind of trains as a locomotive engineer. He had a big HO (1:87) scale layout in his house and as a child, I spent a lot of time with him, driving the small trains up and down. His train collection was huge! Me and my cousin met with HO scale, and I must admit I was hooked with model railroads when I was in primary school...

So model railroads are a family "thing" ;)

My uncle also has a magnificant collection of trains in TT (1:120) scale and my father collects trains in N scale (1:160).

My father and I built a beautiful N scale (epocha III, period 1970) model railroad... this was a great father and son project :)

click on the photo to see the model railroad (46 pictures)

Me and my dad are "crazy" about RC stuff... so you can find a lot of other interesting models like RC (Radio-Controlled) tanks, ships, cars, planes, helicopters, hovercrafts, hi-tech robots etc. And a very big collection of books and magazines about it.

From railroad to diecast model cars...

I remember my first Bburago "model" cars: It was around 1989/1990, they were in 1/24 scale and almost all of them survived in mint condition till this day. I loved the Citröen 1938 T.A. 15 CV in black, damn that car has a gangsta appeal... My first Mercedes "model" car was Burago's 300 SL (black) bougt in Merkur for 700 SLT (aprox. 2,5 €) when I was in first grade of primary school... Burago models were popular back then, you had to have a Ferrari or some other car from this manufacturer. Over the years the passion for cars disappeared slowly, but fortunately not completely, because I was always watching them in shops.

From year 2000/2001 you could say I'm back in the game... I expanded my collection beyond all expectations, and I am still doing this with all my heart :)

Who knows what the next stop will be, definitely a collection showroom or even better; a toy museum :)

One thing is sure: I never thought that one day I would have such a diverse collection of Mercedes-Benz and other model-cars... from a few cents/Euros Mercedes toys to high-end highly collectable limited editions of Mercedes-Benz models in all scales.