I was wondering what your thoughts were about the trend towards specific consist Sets as opposed to generic coach Sets or individual coaches.
Many new releases have consisted of coaches representing a specific train, including destination signs and other details that are specific to that consist, ie Maerklin/Trix's IC Beethoven, TEE Rheinpfeil, etc.
If you are interested in a type of coach or consist, but the model released represents a train or consist that has little or no relevance to the your particular interest, as in my case, where I am modelling Swiss trains and Switzerland and as such, am not interested in coaches on a run from Dortmund to Munich or Amsterdam to Vienna. I did get the IC Beethoven Sets, because I like these coaches behind a Re 6/6 (IC Tiziano/Verdi/etc) as I saw around 1985 when I was in Switzerland in the summer.
Here is the question:

1) Would you buy such a Set (or Sets) and imagine that the train was a consist that fit your layout/area of interest?

2) Would you wait for Maerklin (or another company) to release a model of a specific consist that operated in your area of interest?

3) Would you prefer that the models were released without specific destination signs so that they were more universally usable, with decals for destination signs, etc?

4) Would you buy a Set to have it now and then buy the proper consist Set if it is eventually released and then sell the original Set?

For example, I was very happy to have the Trix TEE Roland Set as that consist goes with my Re 4/4II TEE and could be seen every day on the Gotthard line. I was also happy to have the Roco Rheingold (even though the destination signs were incorrectly labelled for Munich) and the TEE Bavaria (Re 4/4I plus coach Set).

I would be very interested in a DB IC Set with destination signs for Switzerland/Italy (ie Verdi, Tiziano) or also as an EC for similar routes. Same would go for Austrian, Italian or French consists. For now, I can overlook the fact that the ones I in my collection have different labels.

Regards

Mike C

Thanks Mike for helping us considering our options.

1.) Yes I would buy such sets as well, the only draw back is the amount in A$.
as most my consists take up to 13(14) coaches it becomes a bit expensive.
Haven't got any TEE coaches (1:87) and these come very rarely as a Sonderpreis (special sale price).
Have 3 sets of French coaches and I need 2 restaurant cars for them but none of them are IC.
Have Austrian coaches (inland travel & cross border coaches.
Have a mixture of Swiss coaches.
One of these days I have to sit down and write what type of coaches are used for what train.

At the moment I'm thinking of keeping my trains for another 2 or 3 years and when the time comes, I may have to undergo some counselling how to deal with divorce, Postmortem Trauma and extreme withdrawal symptons.
I know my wife will support me all the way.
God knows what I'm going to do with my layout, so I don't have to think about it much, leave it to the experts

regards.,

John

Hi!

1) Yes.
2) No.
3) I don't like decals. I think it would be better to have printed destination signs and decals, so if you don't like the printed version you can have something different. But if you don't like decals, you still have printed destination signs.
4) Maybe.

On my layout you can see trains side by side that couldn't have met in real life (either because of different times or different areas).
It's my world, and I only try to keep each train prototypically correct.

Hi Mike, I agree with Ray totally.

1.yes
2.no
3.yes
4.no

Cheers,Peter