Quote:[size=1" face="Verdana" id="quote]quote:Originally posted by Jim Thompson
Being a dyed-in-the-wool 3-railer,
Hi Jim,
never mind - IMHO that's fully ok!
The following pics might help to understand the difference between the Fleischmann/TRIX two-rail and Märklin center-rail version(s).
I have this Merkur set and as well the cars #5840 and #5843 from the former Gambrinus set.
From a distant view there seems to be no difference - but let's have a closer look (the small part in the front is somehow important too
) - starting with the bottom side.
The car from the Merkur set has interior lights, the car from the Gambrinus set not (yet). What you see now is two wheel contacts (both at the same side) and the slider. The following two pics show them close up. The slider has Märklin part #115997 or Fleischmann part #1459.
The wheel contact has Fleischmann part #614961. For AC version cars there may be only installed two of them, as said before both on the same side (usually at the isolated wheel side). This corresponds to "ground" (i.e. brown) connection to the interior light (or decoder).
The other supply line comes by the slider.
Both these wheel contacts and the slider connect to two metal strips inside the car bottom which also act as weight. Final connection between these strips and the interior light is accomplished by (usually 4) U-shaped contact springs (Fleischmann part #688803). The current coupling contacts are directly wired to the interior light pcb.
This is for the AC version of the Merkur set. The DC version has each four such wheel contacts and (obvious) no slider and thus also doesn't need current conducting couplings. So, changing the light wiring of the DC version would be required in order to have it work in AC.
A few more comments to the cars. As mentioned already, the current conducting coupling extends the gap (by about 3mm).
whereas the distance with the regular Märklin short coupling is basically perfect. But you see also a small drawback - the Gambrinus car (Ffm 11606) carries the same waggon number as the car with slider from the Merkur set and it (again obvious) has a different train route plate (München - Kiel vs. Hamburg Altona - Frankfurt). But this is really only for the very excessive "Nietenzähler" (bolt counters)!
I also replaced the short end bellows at one side of the baggage car and at the last car of the Merkur set with the long ones in order to add the two additional cars to my train; they have Fleischmann part #125110.
The rear view of the Märklin and Fleischmann cars also unfolds another difference - the buffers. At the Merkur set they are kind of rectangular whereas at the original Fleischmann cars they are round - and too big for the Märklin short coupling; thus cause derailing. I simply eliminated this by cutting the lower part away (I still might reshape the complete buffer such that it looks like those from the Merkur set - unfortunately they are part of the car bottom; maybe cutting them completely away and mount spring buffers instead is the best).
I'll probably as well move the slider to either the dining or baggage car and switch the train interior and rear lights (maybe also the table lights [:p]) by a function decoder.
Quote:[size=1" face="Verdana" id="quote]quote:P. S. These are still really, really nice sets!!!!
YES - Undoubted!!!
PS: I also did some (minor) changes to the decoder configuration of my BR05 which makes even more fun driving the train with that great loco![:p]
