Hi all!

In the beginning of our summer vacation me and FD went to Florence for a few days. It was a wonderful city with enough art and history to last a lifetime! To be honest, I think one has to travel there more than once to comprehend the city and all has to offer. I had, of course, checked if there were any märklin dealers in the area. One of our days there we stopped by "Dreoni Giocattoli di Laura e Silvia Dreoni sas". I can't remember the name of the shop but märklin.de states that is the name of it. Anyhow, after having spent almost half an hour there I ended up with a VI Trains 1078S "Minuetto" set (DC).

The set itself was new in box, unopened. Together with the guy working in the train section we opened it and quickly saw that the manual stated it would be easy to convert to 3r. As you might know I focus on Swiss models so buying an Italian model was different but it's appearance really appealed to me. And in my to-be layout there will be no country borders! .

The train is a model of the treno MD Tn-03 "Provincia Autonoma di Treno". It is a diesel powered railcar with 3 sections. As you will see the middle section shares it's boggies with the end sections. After having come home to Sweden again and viewed the model more closely I quickly realized that the person working at VI trains clearly had not tried to mount a slider on to the model. If one would have followed the instructions that came with the set it would have resulted in the boogie with the slider getting raised when passing over turnouts that have puckos which are slightly raised. (Unfortunately I had only one "long", slightly used slider in my spares part box to use at the time). They say a picture says more than 1000 words so one of the pictures below show what I did. Furthermore, I added a lokpilot v4 decoder so that it can run alongside other trains.

After having converted the model to 3r and added a decoder I can observe that it runs great on C track even though it is a little loud. Please note that I have not yet mounted the items in the goodie-bag so the pictures show the model "naked", without any additional details. There seem to be a lot though because there are two big plastic bags with detailing that can be glued on. Once I have had the chance to run try it out some more I will post an update to this thread but for the time being you will have to make do with the picturs below. For anyone thinking of buying this model I can recommend it if you are prepared to put in some time to convert it to 3r.

Oliver, it is an impressive model, noticing you've added an ESU lokpilot you may can program the motor to make less noise, just a thought, its bit strange having a spring controlling the bogy, it can't go anywhere except following the track, usually springs control the couplings and not the bogies.

John

I can absolutely post some pictures of this. It is actually a great idea as some of the steps needed to get it to work on 3r are not even in the instructions. There was a lot of trial and error when doing this conversion. One thing was that after I thought I was finished the first time, as soon as I turned on track power it shorted out. Strange, I thougt, as the wheelsets are DC. The individual coaches can be taken apart to make 3 smaller ones. Except for the swiweling mechanism, there are is also a plug that has to be connected to the next coach. Since the set picks up current in all boggies this caused it to short out (after having rewired one of the sides to the slider instead on boggie 1). I decided against putting a second slider on the train since there was no space and the set is not so long. The current slider is "almost" in the middle of the set anyway. Not a word about this in the instructions. There is also a little switch on the main pcb which you have to flick to the other position, otherwise it would not supply power to the decoder.
I will post some additional pictures next time I open it up. Since it was rather delicate in opening I don't want to do it unless something has to be fixed etc as I am afraid of breaking some brittle plastic hinges.



John, how can I reprogram the decoder? I suspect it is with CV values? I have a mobile station 1 available but can also write/read CV through desktop station. I took a look in the instruction booklet that came with the decoder but my german is not that good.. Thankful for any help! Regarding the springs I did not really think of it until you brought it up but you are right, the boogie is not going anywhere so why the spring. I can only guess they have placed it there to make sure it centers correctly after a turn but it would do that anyway..


I can try this during the week. I have only r1 and r2 to try but so far r1 and r2 seems to work flawlessly. I will try running it through some turnouts as well and post back.