Good morning Gents,
in the process of making a test track that is a simple large oval around my home office. The purpose is to be able to run HO scale 3-rail trains. I would like to be able to run anything that I purchase (from train swap meets/yard sales/etc.) and test them out (vintage to modern digital). If I use Marklin C track, what transformers/controllers would you use? I have read to stay away from the older metal blue Marklin transformers.

How would you guys wire it up?

I am wanting to run only one train at a time around the oval. My initial thought was to wire up a white marklin ac transformer to handle the analog locos and have a switch to switch over to either a mobile station 2 or a Marklin 6021 controller. I don't expect that I will have many modern 3-rail locomotives with all the digital bells and whistles.

Thoughts and ideas are much appreciated.

I have a mobile station 2 from a previous project, but no ac transformer yet. I also have a couple pieces of older Marklin digital, but I don't believe that they will help me here (2 of the Marklin 6040's)

Thanks again for the help :)

-Todd

Hi Todd
You have and excellent idea

My only restriction is NOT to use a 6021 (30 years old, cannot do DCC nor MFX, has only 4 fonctions, need a zillion other modules for control of switches).
The 6021 is an excellent and reliable unit but very outdated.
My suggestion is to replace it with an MS2 with a track box and a wall wart power supply.

Cheers
Jean

Correct.
And to some extent you can configure digitally which functions are active in analogue operation.
With decoders from ESU and Zimo that even includes sound. So far, I haven't seen a Märklin mfx decoder that supports sound with analogue operation.

Acceleration delay and load regulation work in analogue. Braking delay works with some limitations.

IMHO digital locos operate much better, even in analogue mode.