Help on Fleischmann N-scale

[Anonymous]

Need help on first purchase of Feischman. A few questions if anyone can help.

1. Quality. I am interested in Fleischman steamers because I am a quality nut - but only familiar with Kato diesels. Can anyone comment of the mechanical quality between Kato and Fleischmann?

2. Are there anygood resources to find out the specs or more information about the motors and internal components of the Fleischmann trains - their website has just about nothing other than a product description.

3. Do all Fleischmann steamers have the motor in the tank and are the drive wheels under the tank powered when Flieshmann description says the tender has drive wheels?

Thanks for the help.

PGWIN

[Anonymous]

Fleischmann locos are superb. I've not tried any of their bigger steamers due to shortage of funds, but their diesel/electric locos are easily the equal of Kato if not better. I also have a small 2-6-0 tank loco which is superb - low gearing equals good slow running.

As I understand it, most of the Fleischmann tender locos have the motor and drive system in the tender. This is supposed to allow greater haulage capabilities, but, as I'm not a fan of tender drives (they look ok, I just can't cope with the idea that the tender is doing the pulling rather than the loco!), I'm not entirely sure. Still, Fleischmann probably know what they're doing, and if anyone can get a tender drive to work it's them!

Best advice for more information would be to get hold of a copy of the Fleischmann catalogue. This has lots of useful information in it. There's a section on which lighting units will fit which cars and which couplings can be used - If you buy anything with close coupling (there's a K prefix on the reference number on the box), make sure you get a few 9545 Profi-couplers. When you fit these, the car diaphragms touch on straight track but will still go round quite sharp curves. They make the consist look like a train rather than a collection of vehicles, if you see what I mean.