blid

At 21:55 in the Marklin new items 2024 video you can see some cylinder smoke. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMb-Pg3PdRk

Sorry Chuck. I was held up by a long phone call. You beat me to it.

Marklin has made F7 A and B. Check marklin.de and select the filter under ”Service”. Marklin also had a sneak product line ”Maxi”. I googled ”marklin maxi diesel engines” and saw UP and Santa Fe. My remaining eye has very limited vision so I didn’t check if they were F3 or F7. Maxi were more toy like and maybe not true 1:32. LGB is now part of the Marklin family and the have some I think. If so, larger than 1:32. I don’t think Marklin has made any 0-scale for the last 50 years. In the smaller scales besides H0 they have Minitrix (N scale I think) and Z with US diesels.

I didn't find the pictur but made screen dump from a video. It shows Big Boy on LGB R3. To me it looks like the hole width of the engine sticks out from the center of the tracks. If you intend to place the tracks along walls the clearance have to be added to the equation. So for R3: 2(1198 + 120) mm = 2636 mm, about 8.7 feet. Suggestion for he curve using LGB. One R5 18000, thre R3 16000, one 18000, three R3 16000 and one 18000. My track planning softwre calculates the center track distance to 2758 mm. This gives 2998 mm or 9 feet 10 inch with clearance as above. This will look so much better and the clearance need by the straight tracks will be less. Besides, if you look at a train in a sharp curv from the inside it will look much better than from the outside. If you don’t go for LGB tracks; check the code. MTH made “pizza cutter wheels” on purpose. They will not run on Marklin/Hubner tracks. The flanges are to deep. I don’t know the required code.

I was wrong. What I called R3 is in fact R5. R3 has a diameter of 7.86 feet. About 8 feet as you wrote.

I’m afraid you have not observed the difference between the European and US notification of curved tracks. In Europe the radii is measure in mm to the center of the track. LGB R3, the 18xxx, are 2363 mm. This gives a diameter of 4726 mm or about 15.5 feet – if I am correct. I have a picture of my Big boy on LGB R2 showing the ridiculous overhang, but I can’t find it right now.

Now that I have found the symbol for inserting links. Here is a link to the company selling these (too?) small EOT lamps: https://www.dccconcepts.com/product/end-of-train-lamp-with-all-electronics-3-pack/

I saw this today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL3SiGLw_n0. He is running OO-gauge so almost HO but no need to pay for a truck.

About salvaging the smooth ended ones. When I look at them they look like 2 modern massive wooden beams since there is no indication of separation between the layers (just looking at the ends). If you gently press a knife or something to make a mark where the “planks” meet maybe the eye will see a stack of planks instead. The mark just have to make the light create a shadow. They will still be planks of identical size aligned lengthwise. I can imagine Bug’s Doghouses cutting planks to a specific length and when one plank is cut it is pushed to the side and falls on top of the previous one. Guided lengthwise but not so well side wise. This type of load is probably for another type of car but I don’t know. I can’t do things like this – but I admire those who can and like watching what you produce. Hence it doesn't feel right for me to give advice but you did ask for ideas.

In my post from February 23 2014 "Marklin Track", http://In my post from February 23 2014, http://www.gscaletrainforum.com/index.php?/topic/184-marklin-track/&tab=comments#comment-1273 , I warned about a potential problem with MTH power pickup shoes and LGB R5 turnouts The engines might get stuck.

I don't remember if it was on this or another forum I saw the tip, but I bought the GB (Gardner Bender) Ox-Gard Anti-Oxidant Compound from Amazon.com. Maybe there are better ones?

Many years ago I received a new car with this problem. I noticed that the car had been put in the original styrofoam the wrong way. From that day I used a marker pen and wrote “wheel” on the styrofoam in the end where it was supposed to be. “Door” for passenger cars. blid

Welcome to the forum Keith Maybe my layout can give you some ideas/answers: http://www.gscaletrainforum.com/index.php?/topic/810-my-elevated-semi-permanent-technical-layout/ I recommend the use of a track planning program to check the gradients for the different versions as you go along with your planning. My gradients are 2,5% and 2.85% according to my track planning programs (WinTrack and Scarm). My tracks are LGB with R5 curves (2320 mm radii, 5,2 feet diameter). blid I'm gaining 12 inch too and run with the GG-1 pantographs up (and 8 MTH passenger cars). I have the Santa Fe Hudson and run it with 5 MTH passenger cars.

My roaster is a mix of MTH and Marklin 1:32. After upgrading the MTH PS2 engines to PS 3 I can now use DCC for all my engines. Last summer I measured the power consumption using the Marklin CS1 and CS2 controllers. They have the option of showing Amp, Volt etc. MTH 70-3009-1 Big Boy with PS 3.0 Placed om the track: 0.3 A + Sound and light on: 0.6 A + Smoke: 1.2 A + Speedstep 30 of 126 with 15 cars + caboose with lights: 2.5 A, 18.3 V (level ground). I can't switch the MTH PS3 to DCS so I can't verify my impression that the MTH decoders are more power efficient in DCS mode than in DCC. The way I have raised my layout might give you some ideas. See my-elevated-semi-permanent-technical-layout Upwards 2.6 % and down 3.3 %.

It's working. Nice. Since it is live you have to remember where on the globe this is. Not much daylight this time of year.

A link to this youtube video was given in marklin-user forum. 10 minutes in, I thought about your layout. https://youtu.be/lLrV1iyUjqY?t=599

Nice but I think the guy fixing the 99 car need some light!

Hi Josh and welcome to the forum. What a great idea. I hope you will follow it thru. Unfortunately others with similar ideas have sooner or later realized how much space is required, especially for the curves. I suggest that you start with a track planning program. There are free programs available for download like SCARM, http://www.scarm.info. Draw your rooms and try to fit the tracks where you want them. Even if the program doesn’t have the tracks of your choice the same diameter/radius curves will occupy the same space. Tighter curves means smaller types of engines to choose from.

I added a 3-rail 0-gauge oval to the top level of my outdoor layout. Here is an updated track plan and a picture of a MTH 0-gauge 20-3548-1 Chessie Steam Special.

Two warnings. I use my programming track pieces when I program POM too. No risk of changing other decoders by mistake. Just switching the feeder plugs to the tracks. When the controller does the CV changes “behind the scene” you don’t know what will happen to the other bits in CV 29. The controller probably sets value 32 (one for long address and zero for short) and sets all the other bits to zero. Here is one description of the CV 29 from dccwiki.com:

It depends on the controller obviously. With a modern controller that talks to the MTH decoder on the main (POM), you only have to give the address. Long or short, and the controller takes care of all the CV:s, CV1/17 + 18 +29. My Marklin CS1 Reloaded (with the modern ESU firm ware) did that even for the steamers.

Unfortunately I have not had much time for OneGauge since my last post in this tread. However, I now have my own CS1 Reloaded (old Marklin controller with modern ESU firmware). After reading some tips from a Marklin-user forum member about programming MTH H0 PS3E+ decoders with Marklin CS2, I tried them on the MTH OneGauge PS3/2 Upgrade decoder in my Hudson. No success. Then I tried to write a long address with the CS1 Reloaded (firmware 4.1.2). Success! I have now loaded the latest firmware (4.1.4) and written a long address to my MTH PS3/2 Upgrade Triplex. For some reason I had to reset the decoder first. 8 to CV 8 and got the short address 3 back. Then just wrote the new long address and pressed the symbol for sending it to the track. Nothing seemed to happen, but the engine now responds to the long address. The programming was on the main (POM). It seems like these engines require more power than the CS1 Reloaded provides on the programming track. blid

Joe, I run my GG-1 with 8 ”out of the box” MTH coaches. To the second level of my layout there is a 2.5 % incline. Not that I have carefully checked, but I have never noticed any problems. What I have noticed is that this particular engine is very hard to get on the tracks properly. There is a connection between the two driver blocks. A pin from one block is supposed to go into a slot from the other. When I have got all the wheels on the rails I always check if this pin is where it is supposed to be. On many occasions it is not, and I have to start all over again. Since you are used to diesels you may not be aware of this. Blid

Unfortunately I don’t think I can do that kind of work anymore. blid

I don’t know what to say now. I decided to try the Lokprogrammer once more. This time just writing with no previous reading. First resets: 8 to CV8 and 55 to CV55. Then address 34 to CV1 (the address it should have already). All writes were reported failures. After that I tried the CS2 and the engine (address 34) started with no problems!