I have read about many AZL locos here and about some of the MTL locos. What about Marklin locos? Are they ok or are they garbage? I am stilly toying with the idea of building a scenic run in the future. Basicly a place to runs trains with towering scenery . I have not decided where in the house I would build an Z scale layout and this is likley way off into the future. This may endup being a project for my front porch area once we weatherproof it and add heat/cooling. I dont want to spend a fortune on this aspect of the hobby as my primary focus is N scale.
In my opinion, YES! Marklin is garbage! They are light weight, often wery unprotothypical (exept the gg-1) I am seriously consithering to sell all of my marklin engines.. Their waggons are ok, but they are quite out of scale too, especially the boggies. This goes only for US rolling stock, but i don`t think the European prototypes is too good either. I know someone is going to be mad at me because i just hurt their marklin feelings, but as i say this is MY opinion. GO MTL and AZL!
I wouldn't quite call them garbage :teeth: if only to avoid being lynched :shade: by the usual mob:zip: but otherwise you are 100% right Henrik Chris
Actually the Marklin locos are constructed very well, however, their performance is based off of 30 year old design rules. We require much better performance now, as we run out trains at other than full blast in a circle!
A little out of topic but: Both my marklin f7`s fitted with lenz silver mini`s died 2 min`s ago.. On program track they are ok but they just dont want to drive?
Makes sense. I have not quite decided where in the house a Z-Scale effort will exist. I will probably start with a loop with a passing siding or two just to toy with this scale some. I would like to build a scenic run in our closed in porch area but that wont happen until the porch is heated / cooled/ better insulated than present. The porch project is down the road quite some time. The scenic run would be a single track main line run through some forrested hills / mountains. I am thinking either BN or GN/NP. Z scale will not be my main scale because for myself many aspects are just too small for me to work with. That is not a slam by any means, just how it fits with me. But for a scenic run for "Railfanning" in a small area, Z scale fits the bill. Consider this my exploratory committee for my run in Z scale
Hi Matt, in many ways I'd agree with the above posts however, a lot of performance depends on what power source you run the loco's. If you use a standard MRC or Marklin power pack, the marklin loco's perform at a C grade. Compare that to an A grade with the new GP35. Now if you add a gaugemater to the power pack, then the grade goes up, as loco's like the Mikado's and the 0-6-0 which are prone to stalling greatly improve. Now if you also use Jorger speed controllers with the gaugemasters you can make any loco run pretty darn sweet. I can run my Marklin mikado at a creep for as long as I choose with no stalling or stumbling. The same goes for my MT moguls which use a marklin mech. By the use of these two devices, I have the joy of running all my loco's at slow realistic speeds with little if any jerks and stalls.
Well I just now noticed that MTL does not offer the F7 in BN. Also, after poking around a bit......WOW are AZL locos pricey and hard to come by.
a BN would be easy to paint. But if you are at all into modern diesel hood units the MTL GP35 is a gem at an affordable price! soon there will be GP7s and 9s all around, or well under, $200 and you can get them now in CP and UP paint. since you are in Minneapolis/St. Paul area wouldn't you like one of those crazy rebuilt Twin Cities and Western locos? i love their stuff. just thinking out loud. dave f.
If you ask around you will get different opinions. I will say at first mine ran loud and jerky. I completely dissasembeld it, cleaned it up, put it back together and relubed and now it runs fantastic. Still loud, but even without Jorgers or gaugemasters mine runs very very well. I'll even go so far as to say I like running it better than my GP35 because of the pulling power.
Actually, I have been tempted by the TCW.....I am not sure what it is....but I really dig the look of their locos. Plus they seem like an underdog to me....always have to root for the underdog. I would have to have someone else paint them....I am not at that level yet. If I were to jump down this rabbit hole in the future....I would look at the time frame of the early to mid 70's shortly after the creation of the BN. The reasons here are obvious......GN, NP, CB&Q, and of course BN itself
I sort of kind of maybe ran the idea of a small Z scale layout in the "Future Unused" portion of the porch where we currently have shelving that will be moved into the "future" garage and she said NO WAY IN %*&# .........so I am guessing I can start construction of the Z scale layout in about five to six years when the garage is built Seriously, she may change her mind but if she does not, I still might build a small layout in the future for the basement or somewhere in the future train room.....hard to say.
