Marklin on the 'merican Layout?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I have my eye on some Marklin Amtrak coaches.

Marklin HO #43600 for reference. They appear to be pretty nice, but I haven’t seen them in person. At the moment my only Amtrak stuff is Overland brass coaches with a few Walthers autoracks. Some of you may have seen me posting about this stuff before. I have always modeled freight, but I got the bug to do some passenger trains.

My layout is all Atlas, Micro Engineering, and Walthers Shinohara code 83 with Atlas black-tie Code 100 behind the scenes. Control is MRC Prodigy Advanced 2.

I understand that Marklin is AC. I also thing some of it is three-rail.

Questions:

  1. Do the Marklin cars measure up? Are they as good as Kato or Walthers? I don’t expect them to be as good as the Overland cars, but if they are close that would be acceptable.

  2. Are these cars even compatible with my layout physically?

  3. Are they compatible with my layout electrically? I think the answer is no here, but given that all consumer electronics runs in the same voltage range, maybe interior lighting could would still work with minor changes.

2

The car’s won’t be compatible electrically - since they’re made for 3-rail operation, there’s no insulation between the wheels.

Marklin’s Trix brand is designed for 2-rail operation.

Not sure about the availability of aftermarket wheelsets to replace those in the Marklin cars.

Generally, their stuff is of very high quality, but sometimes the North American prototype stuff can look a little weird.

You’d need to replace the couplers too - I believe Kadee makes couplers that will fit the European standard “coupler box”

Hope this helps,

Eric

3

Marklin rolling stock is not compatible right out of the box. You need to exchange the wheels, which should not be an issue, as Marklin also offers replacement wheels for 2-rail operation. However, couplers are a different thing. Kadee has replacement couplers that just drop into the coupler box, but I am not sure whether they will have the correct height to match with non-Marklin locos or rolling stock, as they are truck-mounted and not body mounted.

4

Hi

Marklin is a very good quality brand of high repute, its held in very High regard in Europe so they should be very good quality cars.

point two) Yes and No yes scale wise coupling no its a Euro style coupling in NEM pocket.

But kadee now do a coupling that fits a NEM coupler pocket.

point three) Probably not Marklin is three rail or stud contact and may even still be AC.

I don’t think Marklin changed to DC but check this point

So you would have to source replacement wheels kadee couplers and possibly rewire the thing.

The Marklin cars tend to be very very expensive even on there home turf.

So I would seriously look for US made cars of a brand that is held with the same High regard as Marklin is

and get those instead

regards John

5

Northwest Short Line has the conversion wheels, I believe Reboxx does as well, drop either one of them an email and they’ll hook you up. KaDee has the replacement NEM couplers. You might want to look at the new Walther cars and compare prices.