Hello Everyone,
Sorry for writing in English, but I still don't speak German.
My name is Pavel, I currently live in Canada. After seeing large scale model trains I decided to abandon H0 and to move to Scale 1 or in the worst case 0. It is a very good idea some investigation to be made before buying for not wasting money and everything else....
I am not a "steam" fan so I would like to start with a model of one of the mass produced and used German diesel locomotive - V160 or BR215/218.
So I see that the prices of brand new models of Marklin and KM1 are comparable. In the German e-bay this locomotive can be found second hand for a very good price, but not KM1 - they sell the KM-1 one even more expensive than the manufacturer price.....I know that KM-1 are Brass or Messing premium, limited quantity models but is it fair to pay so much money for KM-1? I am little bit more details-oriented - I like better reproduced cab interiors, opening doors etc. in which fields Marklin definitely looses.....But I also have heard that KM-1 and other Brass models are for mainly display and Marklin is for "driving" on the tracks...And that Messing is mainly for steam-lovers. I also already read that KM1 isn`t perfect too - there are technical problems with the motors, sounds, smoke generators, decoders etc........And at last, but not least, Marklin is still made in Germany and in Hungary, but KM-1 - in China, in spite of the very high prices of the latest one...I recently heard that even Fine Models or Wunder (both are even much more expensive) is already made in Asia.
So what are the advantages and disadvantages of both kind of models? And what are the impressions from MBW Modellbau?
I am sorry if I cannot see that these topics were already discussed in the forum, but in my case the language is a problem....
Regards
Pavel