Since there is nothing new to buy that appeals to me in Z I have been looking at ebay.
Normally I only go for ‘buy it now’ but before I put the filter on I saw a 88321 at an opening bid which looked interesting with less than 1 hour to go.
This is a USA outline EMD F7 A-B-A with caboose in Pennsylvania livery. Apart from some cabooses I bought cheap for the metal wheels I have not previously bought American. I managed to get the set at the opening price and bid for the 87847 matching 6 coaches, again, getting them for the opening bid price.
They arrived yesterday and I tested them today on the Noch suitcase layout, the locos work, not very well, so a strip down, clean and oil will be necessary, all part of the enjoyment for me!
ChrisG

Both A units have 5 pole motors but B centre unit is unpowered, the three units are permanently coupled together. Annoyingly for me the two A units are wired in the same way multiple units such as ICEs are, that is the pickup is always from the leading unit with two wires going through the centre unit to power the rear unit. With my ICEs I disabled this to improve pickup efficiency by shorting out some diodes. I may well do this here.
Referring to recent posts on choice of Z controllers: At the moment this combination does trip out my Rokuhan RC-03 which is rated at 900mA, the headlights at each end are conventional filament lamps and both are on together regardless of direction of travel which certainly ups the current consumption. I don’t know if this is how it is supposed to be, there is no evidence of repairs or tampering.
I still have a couple of the LED conversion items so I will swap the incandescent lamps for those and reduce the power consumption.

Never having shown any interest in the North American stock before I have no idea how common or otherwise these two sets are.
The same vendor has other North American outline Märklin Z gauge stock but I think that I will stop here.

Meanwhile I am awaiting the V320 and the new Class 50 with cab tender and in x years time the model of the battery powered rail car.

ChrisG

Took the body shells off the F7 chassis yesterday to change the incandescent lamps for leds, a great improvement as the number panels light up as well now and they are more or less directional.
I say more or less because the rear led shows very dim although this might be something to do with the RC-03 controller and it’s coach lighting facility.
Looking at the circuit plates for each A unit there are two visible diodes in each, one in the wire going to the other A and one across the circuit board, is this original? I thought it might be in the lighting circuit to only light up in the forward direction but if so then both must be on short, or is it for something else. I have not noticed similar on any other loco.
ChrisG

Interesting project. I also switched a lot of my older Marklin incandescent lighting to LED's from High Tech Modelbahnen www.z-hightech.de My results varied, like you mentioned, in some swaps the difference was great, much improved lighting, but in others it wasn't really worth the change. Achim is very nice to deal with and ships to the states. I particularly like his trailing cars with lighting, so a shout out there. Let us know if the switch to LED's completely resolves the Rokuhan tripping problem as I never thought of the difference lower consumption lighting would make.

Marklin's 82060 Petroleum Oil Tank Car set goes on my list too now! Great era III set!