Hi since the company I work for here in Sydney Australia (Independent Rail -
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has a whole stack of the ex-DSB series-3 MZ-class diesel locos I'm looking to buy one (or more) of Roco's excellent-looking series-2 HO scale MZ models which have the in-build LokSound DCC decoders and I was wondering if anyone frequenting these newsgroups has either that version or the version with the standard DCC decoder fitted?
I've had some limited experience with the LokSound decoders and I think they're an excellent product which eats any of the SoundTrax, etc. decoders for breakfast. 8-) Can't comment any of the QSI sound stuff at the moment.
My plan is to modify the locos to look like the series-3 ones, perhape re-painting them silver like ours are and maybe even arranging to have special Independent Rail logo decals made up. If any of you frequent my railway image collections on flick.com or railzone.org you'll have seen plenty of pictures of the MZ's from my day-to-day involvement with them, so I think they'd make a very interesting subject for Australian-prototype 'conversion'!
I have testdriven both the Roco and the hobbytrade MZ's
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The both run very smooth and has a lot of traction power (like the 1:1 "models").
The loksound decoders are great - but the sound in the Roco version is not quite the correct sound. It is here that hobbytrade has the advantage. They have recorded actual sounds og MZ's and done a very nice job squeezing it into the loksound decoder - their sound files are not for download anywhere.
Do you have a direct link to those pictures? I subscribe to a danish newsgroup, where we are interested in what happens to "our" MZ's in Australia....
I'll second the recommendation for the HobbyTrade locos - I have the MZ Series 4 (3-rail "AC" version with sound). I bought it from Kystbanen in Copenhagen, and they agreed that the sound was the most accurate of the available models. It drives very smoothly, and pulls well.
The sound files _were_ briefly available from the ESU web-site, but then disappeared. I downloaded them in time ;).
I agree that the ESU decoder is a fine unit -- ESU's LokProgrammer is an excellent way to program the decoders.
Posting this from my gmail account... I didn't know there was another company making models of the MZ's. Will have to check out the HobbyTrade ones and see how they compare to the Roco product.
If HobbyTrade are producing series-3 or series-4 models they're probably better since the ones we have here are the series-3's with the 20-cylinder 645 series engine (btw 1429 broke it's engine crankshaft recently!) and the bodies are a bit different from the series 1 and 2 Mz's based on all the pics I've been researching.
The HEP generators are all disconnected as we don't use them. The locos were overhauled below floor level and the bogies all re-geared for freight working before they were shipped out to Australia, and some of the more mechanically-minded people at our company have done a heap of work modifying cabs, etc. to suit local accreditation requirements. Much of the control equipment is still labelled in Danish and a lot of the switches and buttons in the cabs are not used, though I'm slowly figuring out what everything does when I get a chance to examine the locos during downtime.
Oh that's quite dedicated of them - seems like a good way to go in order to get proper authentic audio sound bytes, etc.
No problem. The pics are mostly in this album:
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at the RailZone Australia website
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is the main URL). I've also upload some of them to flickr.com, which is where I've found some pics of the MZ's from when they were still in Denmark:
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Feel free to share the link(s) around with anyone else who is interested.
Regards,
Craig.
-- Craig Dewick - HO-Scale Railway Modeller and Professional Train Manager at
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or snipped-for-privacy@lios.apana.org.au if you're game! More good stuff at RailZone Australia -
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