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Chester, I had a large Marklin layout that utilized American freight cars and Marklin 3 rail locos. I'm not sure if my experiences would apply to your situation but I do have a few observations. The problem will be with the NEM standard (or NMRA). The wheel set width is slightly narrower than the NMRA standard. This will cause some grief when trying to run rp 25 standard wheelsets through the diverging track on turnouts. I solved this problem by narrowing my NMRA Wheelsets slightly, shimming guard rails on turnouts and using 2271 moveable frog turnouts. Perhaps other manufacturer's switches will have tolerances that are more friendly to American gear. I made many cars with a Marklin coupler on one end and a kadee on the other. They worked fine unless one is switching and needs to be able to couple to both ends of the loco. I wasn't able to run american locos because of the three rail issues. Ultimately this arrangement was an enormous amount of work and still didn't run as well as I would have liked...I have torn it all up and Started over will all 2 rail DC stuff (US prototype). I did have some odd trian combos: Crocodile pulling reefer cars. Classs 24 Steam pulling YV log cars, Norweigian Electrics pulling 10K tank cars etc.... As for those who would protest that such things are not realistic, I would say that everyone has to decide for themselves how far down that road they want to go....There will always be something to find fault with on even the most prototypically accurate railroad... I would be happy to share my experiences in more detail if you are interested. Email me at gtrguy@sbcglobal.com Guy Cantwell
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