The good news: all the tracks work, the turnouts work, no real issues with scenery, the pair of locos didn't stutter or run slow....
But there were a few derailments of the trailing loco.
After a lot of fiddling, I traced this to the bogies on it not swiveling freely. If you swivel the bogies to the extremes it would have trouble getting to those last few degrees, and/or stick there in the extreme position. Thus when running into a tightening curve, the stiffness is forcing one wheelset from the sticking bogie off the track as it reaches that point of swivel. The same thing might happen when the loco bogie was trying to unwind itself back into a straight, but sticks.
I have five of these 4/4 locos: one doesn't seem to work at all (a nice surprise!), two have free-swivelers and three have at least one bogie that sticks (including the dead one). The two that swivel freely do run around the layout beautifully, and they seem quieter and smoother than the locos that have featured in previous videos.
Now here's the kicker - these 4/4s are all brand new locos, purchased within the last 18 months. Modellbau-wiki.de says these could be up to five years old, but still.
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| Marklin locos - hopefully this isn't their natural habitat - on the workbench. |
1. HOS So one of the reasons that the bogies could be sticking at the extremes is that the tolerances are bad between the bogie pin and the slots in the frame. Another likely culprit is 'hardened oil syndrome'. Marklin used to use an oil that cakes up into a very hard resiny substance which requires disassembly, an extremely thorough cleaning of all the parts, and lubrication with a light, plastic friendly oil.
Now, I have Kato/Atlas N scale engines that I've owned for almost thirty years which have never been disassembled or oiled and they still run like magic....
HOS has been a complaint of Z scalers for decades now - you see this mentioned a lot on forums and on second hand listings, but... why? Why? Apparently the newer locos use a new oil, but what sort of company would (surely knowingly) treat its customers like that for so long? What sort of customer base would accept such bullshit? Marklin went to 5-pole motors at the turn of the century. Those crappy Athearn blue box locos had them in the 80s.
2. Is that really what the customers want? So I have four red Re 4/4s - with the same road number on the sides of course, because that's how Marklin rolls - and one that I picked up in blue 'Cargo' livery. This was part of a special edition box that came with a pewter-cast copy (non-running of course). The standard engines cost almost twice what an N scale item does in US street value. The special editions cost more. Who wants a pewter desk ornament? And who wants to pay extra for one?! Presumably we'll run through green, red and cream (with two pantos instead of one?) and then the special paint schemes will kick in like the Gotthardo... and red will never be seen again. So it is lucky I happened to get into Swiss SBB Z scale modeling when I did and the red ones were available, because it's possible they never will be again.
OK, I'm new to Z scale, but this is a(nother) thing that irks me about Marklin - once they get some wagon or carriage tooled, they seem to spend the next twenty or thirty years milking it with bizarre paint schemes for collectors, yet few people who actually build layouts would ever want.
As an example, as a new modeler to Z and the SBB, I'd like one of those nice red streamlined Re 460s for my passenger trains. It was produced my Marklin in red from 1996-99, so they're looong gone - and with the old three pole motors anyway. Since then, there have been twenty two 'advertising' editions (one was a red but with an unusual 'connecting Switzerland' logo) plus three blue BLS versions. That's 25 non-red editions!
Surely anyone who wants to model Swiss SBB rail would want a red one, but they are stuck with these special editions that you almost never see on trains in the real world, unless you plump for an HOS-infested 20 year old example. Why not make the commonplace available for purchase once in a while? DB's red class 185 (all over the Gotthard) hasn't been available in red in Z since 2008 and are as rare as hen's teeth.
All model railway manufacturers have gone to small runs, but at least Kato and Atlas re-run popular schemes with new numbers every few years. And they always begin by producing a few numbers for each model to start with. Fortunately, with my four identically numbered red 4/4s, the numbers are pretty hard to read in Z...
Same with passenger and freight stock. My SBB passenger car set that I repainted myself into the current white scheme, is made up of a nice SBB panorama car... plus... repainted German models - I assume, as the details don't match the real Swiss cars.
In the freight scene: Intermodal trains are probably the most popular type of freight train in Europe and in 2018, as I type this, you can't yet buy a bogie container car from Marklin. Thats crazy! They'd be sold out in no time. But hey, if you want a bizarre 18 axle torpedo ladle car, or weird loads on flatcars, or a million versions of banana cars, we're your guys!
That makes no sense to me. Don't they want to expand their market by attracting fresh blood into Z scale? Young people typically want to model modern image and run trains - to make in miniature what they see have seen with their own eyes, not model something from the equivalent of the Railroad Circus.
And why are the insides of a loco (under the shell) approx 40% metal, 40% plastic and 20% air? Surely they'd pull better with a bit more of the metallic stuff onboard...? And why can't you sell me spare-parts bogies for me to make my own wagons?!? Grrrrr.
3. Now that's a quality product. DB takes a deep breath and calms down a little...
To be fair, at least one of my 185 'Hoyer' locos which were transformed into BLS 485/6 locos was probably second hand, and they were produced in 2008, so that's a while ago, but they both look in identical condition - clean, no obvious marks or dirt on the wheels, no scratches on the shells...
After my success with the two swivelly 4/4s that ran around the layout so well, the BLS pair were put on the track as I wanted to check how much slower 'The Alpinist' was than the other.
'Connecting Europe' was reasonably quick, the Alpinist was really, really slow. Really, really slow and stuttery. After a few seconds there were a few flashes from under the shell and it moved off trailing a disconcerting amount of smoke... but then it was off. Almost to the speed of the other, and close enough to double-head for a few laps. But boy do they get warm - especially the smoker (must be the Italian half of Mr Alpinista). I'm guessing a stripdown and HOS eradication is in order.
But then, just for a laugh, I put on a new engine from Japanese newcomer Rokuhan.
Wow. Smooth as butter, silent, powerful. Wow. Eye opening really.
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Sure Marklin have been through some hard financial times, and sure they have to cater to many prototype countries/railways/eras, and sure there is easier money in repaints than tooling new prototypes, but surely Z is their differentiator?
They've owned the Z market for so many decades, but it's never been more than a simmering one - an afterthought in model railway history, and they have been ignoring it foolishly. Surely they should have been putting more effort into it than this?
Newcomer Rokuhan's clip-together track is the best you can buy, and their loco mechanisms seem so far ahead of Marklin.
AZL (and too-briefly SZL), and now Rokuhan have produced superb locos and rolling stock over the past five years. Will the folks in Goppingen see the writing on the wall and buck up their ideas before it's too late?
Well maybe.
- My crippled 4/4 models are actually really nice (on the outside, except for those awful pantographs and couplers).
- A surprisingly decent-looking range for 2018 has just been announced, including (get this!!) Marklin's first ever bogie container car in Z scale*: the 'sgs' with three 20-foot boxes on board (sgs is a designation I've never seen in real life, but having googled it, it does exist).
- They have also just introduced a new 'maintenance free' (brushless?) motor.
Maybe things are looking up.
I hope so.
*update: it's not their first at all, it seems it's a reprint of the same car with different containers - the original was issued in 2003!
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