Hi, I've had numerous locos from different railway companies such as DB, ÖBB, SBB, SNCF, SNCB, SJ, Italian, Norwegian and dutch railways and a few years ago deleted some of the locos by selling them off.
the reason behind it was to combine railway companies which have the capacity to travel through either these countries., e.g Germany-Austria-Switzerland or Switzerland and France.
not having a fiddle yard its an enormous effort to take off trains from different railway companies and than replacing them with other railway companies or running trains purely German, Austrian or Swiss and also keep them with in an Era which you can compromise by using such older Eras as special train excursions with current trains.
The other mammoth task is to program locos for the right track or siding, as not all of my sidings have the same length which make it more complicated having certain locos on certain tracks only., than there is the question of passenger and freight trains, longer and shorter trains; by the time you've filled in all the criterias most of the day is gone and than its time to make a video and if anything doesn't work out right, your day has gone, its time for dinner and your wife says to you: who are you ?

John

One point I'm up with most layouts is, I run my electric trains from the overhead system and this enables me to buy DC electric locos and why do I prefer DC locos to AC locos, the only reason is the drive axles are usually 4 instead of 3 with AC locos and this gives me more pulling power for my freight trains and also longer passenger trains.

John

Mike, I do use AC and Dc trains, with DC electric locos I do get extra wheel sets with rubber tyres, most DC locos have all drive but most locos only have 1 wheel set with rubber tyres., some people have criticized my layout's catenary system using Swiss locos but running on a German overhead system., this has been another subject I had no control over, my initial loco stock was mainly Märklin and consisted mainly of German locos with a few Swiss locos and in those days (34 years ago) nobody seem to mind running different trains on the same layout, since than we got a bit more sophisticated and producing layouts either of a specific era or specific railway countries.
Over the years I got a liking with Swiss locos and the dilemma was either to take down the German Overhead system and replace it with the Swiss system but it wouldn't have mattered either way, there was no solution for it.,
In the end it is what it is, HOe from the Mariazeller Bahn, Bonn Hauptbahnhof and a German Overhead system.

John