I would like to know how New Marx, Marx plastic, American Flyer S gauge, and any other makers 3/16 freight cars compare size-wise to Marx tinplate 3/16 cars.
Also, is there any reason or difficulty in swapping couplers and / or trucks to match the Marx butterfly type?
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New Marx had two series of cars; one always had 8 wheels and is perfectly compatible as far as size with Marx 3/16 Scale. I am assuming you are talking about Marx Scale cars with the lower, scale-size trucks (Type B), not the larger 027-size ones (Type D). The New Marx may have tab-and-slot or fork-tilt couplers. The T&S will couple to the plastic Scale FT or the New Marx metal FT, but not original older metal ones. (The older ones lack a slot to accept the tab). Illustrated are the same Marx boxcar on Type B and Type D trucks.
American Flyer S are also compatible with the Marx Scale, although the cabooses are noticeably smaller than Marx. Illustrated are a Marx caboose with an AF on Marx Type B trucks. I have put a T&S coupler onto an AF car, but it is much easier to replace the AF truck with a complete Marx Scale truck. As the coupler is attached to the truck, coupler height is not a problem.
Marx plastic cars are somewhat larger than 3/16. The photo shows one of each for comparison. I do not think you would like to mix them, though Louis Marx Co. did supply Scale trucks on a small number of them. Hope this helps.
I read somewhere that the K-Line S-Gauge cars were Marx cars with trucks replaced by S-Gauge trucks. Here is a neat link to the K-Line cars; scroll down until you find "K-LINE CARS CONVERTED BY TRAIN MASTER." He had a bunch of these on the Bay sometime back and I picked up a number of them. (I'm just a toy train operator; perfect scale isn't too important to me.)
http://aftrainmaster.com/priva...simagesbox_kline.htm
Mark
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