Hi all,

I have only Märklin and Röwa passenger coaches. Most of them are Märklin, but I have DB red-beige TEE coaches for a train, DB blue-beige coaches for a train and one green DB coach with doors in the ends and in the middle. Then also one green coach for railway workers or something like that? It is more detailed one.

I had previously also a bit newer era DB silver-blue coaches for a train and also DB silver-orange coaches for a train. I sold these as they are too new era for me.

In my opinion what I like about Röwa coaches are:

1. Great details for their age!
2. Cheap price today!
3. Quiet and very good running coaches!
4. Especially Röwa Supermodell coaches have very nice couplers. Coaches run VERY close to each other = realistic looking trains!
5. Long enough coaches, but not "too" long. Many are 268 mm lenght.
6. NEM couplers


If someone has something to say about Röwa coaches please feel free to comment here .


What I don't like about some Röwa coaches are:

1. Many different color tone DB red-beige TEE or DB blue-beige coaches. Same is also true with Märklin though. I don't like especially the DB blue-beige coaches blue color tone as so far it won't fit any Märklin blue-beige locomotive.

2. More fragile than some Märklin coaches. But also some Märklin coaches are very fragile.

3. I can't really say anything bad about them!

Cheers,
Janne

Alan,

Yes they look to be very expensive. Some of them cost over 100 euro. Röwa ones are around 268 mm lenght and many of these ADE are 302 mm. My passenger coaches are mostly 24-27 cm lenght and I don't plan to buy any longer than 27 cm. Maybe some of the new Märklin Rheingold coaches are longer though.

What else than lenght difference explains so radical price difference between Röwa and ADE? Very nice detailing, but I think Röwa are also well detailed. Do you know in which year(s) ADE were made? Röwa have not made their own coaches for many, many years. Their Super-Model series were made in 1967-1968 if I understood right.

Regards,
Janne

Many of the Rowa models continued to exist under the Roco moniker after the brand was taken over by the Austrian company.
It wasn't until the early 1980s when Roco introduced the first 1/87 model (Eurofima A9 and B11). A year later came the Bpmz291 and the year or two after that the Bm234.
The level of detail and multicoloured interiors were definitely inspired by the designs of Willy Ade (by then with Ade Modell) and were the first European precision series models by a major manufacturer.

@Alan, from what I remember, the ADE coaches were not made by Rowa. The company (ADE) was founded by Willy Ade following his departure from Rowa and the acquisition of that company by Roco and made their own models.

Regards

Mike C

Thanks Alan, Willem and Mike for your answers and information about Röwa and Ade.

Alan: If your Ade coaches are around 2 inch longer than Märklin DSB 4025 tinplate coaches (24 cm?) then they could be maybe 302 mm lenght? I didn't know that Märklin DSB 4025 tinplate coaches are so pricey. I have four Märklin DSB 4045 (first version) and thought they are expensive, but these 4025 are even more. Nice Röwa railcar! I have not seen one before as I usually search only for Märklin items when I use eBay.

Regards,
Janne

Hello,

I have also some Röwa 1/100 UIC-X coaches, and agree with Janne about all the good points he listed.
The brand never was popular in Finland, and I bought my first ones here in U.S. from Ebay. Not sure if they were listed as Rocos, but I was positively surprised. The history and link to ROCO is described in the postings above.
Specially I like their silberlinge steering car with a special lightguide and directional end lights.

Since the cars are cheap not real collectibles I run them in train shows where the conditions may be quite rough.
They are also good project material. Most of the roofs are molded in cheesy looking plastic, so painted most of them light gray.
The interiors may also be crazy yellow or bright red. Trying to enhance those too.

Röwa used several different truck-drawbar designs. I found the most robust for small radius or s-curves the one with sideways moving buffers. The other designs have NEM pockets, but Märklin close couplings tend to interfere with the buffers in curves pushing the coach off the track.

Printing and lettering is not as crisp as today's standards, but when the train is moving nobody notices it.

Regards,
Juha