Donnerbüchsen Recommendation
Can anyone recommend what they feel are the best detailed Ep 3 Donnerbüchsen available? In addition, do you have a particular class of locomotive you like to see paired with these coaches? Thanks for the recommendations. Chris

From a totally unbiased perspective, I would have to say that the Brawa ones are without a doubt the best detailed on the Market at the moment. http://www.brawa.de/Produkte/H0/Personenwagen/45750-bid-21.html http://www.brawa.de/Produkte/H0/Personenwagen/45751-bpostid21.html http://www.brawa.de/Produkte/H0/Personenwagen/45757-bid-21-db.html http://www.brawa.de/Produkte/H0/Personenwagen/45758-bid-21-db.html http://www.brawa.de/Produkte/H0/Personenwagen/45759-bpostid-21-db.html As for Steam locomotives to pull them, depending on your region, I would say class 24, 38, 64, 65, 75, 86 would be fairly typical. A class 18 while possible, in my view would be doubtful. John

Here is a reasonably comprehensive site about Donnerbüchsen. http://donnerbuechse.de.vu/ From this, while the Brawa coaches are by far the best detailed (and probably the most expensive) just about any of the major manufacturers coaches will do. Amazing what you can find on www.google.de John

In the Wuppertal area in Epoche IIIa the V36 seemed to be used on a lot of trains using these coaches and especially with one coach coverted to a driving trailer (only available as a conversion kit). David

It all depends what you are looking for. If you want robust models that can be operated by all the family, keep the Brawa ones in the showcase and use Märklin. If you want detailing go for Brawa, if you want a range of prototypical coaches buy Fleischmann. Here are a few comments garnered from a German forum. Märklin thunderboxes are about 20 years old and look it.They are too high, less well-detailed and have a number of errors and weaknesses. E.g. they have two identical end platforms with a handbrake crank, which neither the prototypes nor the Fleischmanns have. Also the coaches are all mounted on the ABi undercarriage, which means the body supports are in the wrong place on the Bi. 3-railers should note that the Märklin luggage van with tail lights may short over turnouts, although it can be used to power lighting in the remaining coaches. That said, if dropped, Märklin are more likely to bounce off the carpet than break, which may be a plus point for some! Trix models appear to be from the same mould as Märklin. Fleischmann has a much wider range; as well as a luggage van, Bi and ABi there is also an Ai first class coach and a heavy luggage van (Bid). They are also a class above when it comes to running quality. The railings and rivets (no counting!) are much finer that on their Märklin equivalent. A minor point is that, whilst the door handle on the luggage van is picked out in a different colour, it isn’t on the closed 1st class coach, so you have to do that yourself. If buying second-hand, be aware that Fleischmann upgraded at least one these coaches about 10 years ago but didn't change the model number. You may wish to avoid the older version. Roco Donnerbüchsen are very attractive and run well, but are also getting on a bit. And they have made exactly the opposite mistakes to Märklin. The Bi and ABi are both mounted on a Bi undercarriage. As a result the body supports on the ABi are not right. Furthermore the same roof is used for the ABi and the Bi, so that on the ABi the ventilators are not distributed correctly on the roof. Roco and Märklin Donnerbüchsen do not go very well together because Märklin coaches are about 1,5 - 2mm higher than Roco or Fleischmann. You can mix Fleischmann and Roco without thinking, you should run the Märklin ones on their own. The models of the early wooden thunderboxes by Brawa show what can be achieved today in terms of detailing and quality, albeit a a premium price. In addition a single Brawa Bid in a Fleischmann rake looks quite realistic and enables prototypical variations in the train formation. On the subject of fragility Brawa uses a strong flexible plastic so that in normal use breakages should not occur. However you can easily bend e.g. the hand rails. This can be reversed using a pair of tweezers. Do not pick them up with the fingertips and do not give hand them to children. They are not that robust. One of mine arrived in the post with a broken step which the dealer replaced free of charge. Finally a comment about the luggage van. The orientation of the cupola appears to be unimportant, but the van itself usually ran at the end of the train so the guard could observe any problems. Some of the cupolas were removed during the late 1950s and 1960s because they were not needed. Roco had at least one of these as an Austrian model in its programme, so that you could use it to exchange the roof. One final point: most if not all of these coaches can be Gaßnerised if you need to expand your fleet beyond the meagre offerings of one dealer. HTH,

I think that it is also wothwhile to point out that "thunderboxes" are not the only Donnerbüchsen. I will be brave and say that just about any 2 and 3 axel passenger coach's (and the 4 axel rebuild coaches) coud be seen in Donnerbüchsen service. Admittedly, the deeper into Epoch 3 you go (ie closer to Epoch 4) the different types gradually dissapeared as they were written off and replaced by newer coaches. John

John, In Paderborn they used to call these services, Bimmelbahn zug. David

Hi Tim, So the Brawa Ci+Ci ( http://www.brawa.de/Produkte/H0/Personenwagen/2422-ci-ci-wue29.html ) are Donnerbüchsen but the Brawa Bi Wu 83 ( http://www.brawa.de/Produkte/H0/Personenwagen/45606-bi-drg.html ) is not? Cheers John

The name Donnerbüchse or "thunderbox" (originally Donnerwagen = "thunder wagon" and Ackermann'sche Donnerbüchse = "Ackermann's thunderbox" after the Head of Transport in the Reich Ministry) was given to the standardised, two-axle, DRG open coaches that were built from 1921 onwards and which, by contrast with earlier classes, were made entirely of iron or steel. The name stems from the loud rumbling these coaches made due to the fact they were not insulated. The immediate forerunners of these coaches were also called Donnerbüchsen despite their wooden construction. The coaches were a result of the shortage of coaching stock after the First World War. Although they were always intended to be made of iron, most wagon works couldn't switch over straight away, so the first batches were still made of wood. Between 1921 and 1923 90 iron and 2639 wooden coaches entered service. The wooden ones were all built as 4th class coaches, the iron ones were designed as 2nd, 3rd and 4th class. In 1927/28 a further 517 steel-only 4th class coaches were built (440 as Austauschbauart=wagons with standard components) and from 1928 to 1930 5009 coaches of 2nd, 3rd, and 3rd/4th class (3377 as Austauschbauart), so that by 1930 over 8250 coaches had entered service. The majority of coaches that had been commissioned as 4th class were redesignated as 3rd class coaches in 1928 and later modified. Between 1923 and 1931 917 Pwi luggage vans of similar construction were built.

The Brawa Cid-21 model represents the most common of the wooden coach classes - 2236 were built as Di-21 - after reclassification from 4th to 3rd class in 1928. The Cpostid-21 was one of 28 reclassified Di-21 coaches that was modified with a postal compartment. Let's hope they follow up with the only wooden luggage van, the Pwi-23, of which 287 were made up to 1927. The Trix, Märklin and Fleischmann models are representative of the most common variants of the Austauschbauart thunderboxes i.e. Cid-27, BCi-28, Ci-28, BCi-29, Ci-29, Pwi-29 and Pwi-30.

Liliput has a nice set "Donnerbuchse" based on the wuerttemberger/badisch 2 axle waggons. Very nicely detaied. Jacq

Hi Jacq, these coaches from Liliput-Bachmann look real nice but only one of these has the right 1:87 dimensions. The models have all the same length while the different prototype coaches had different lengths due to the standard compartment dimensions each class had in the Bad.St.Eb. Despite this fact those coaches look really nice. Nice but expensive are also the quite modern saxon 2-axle coaches being offered by Piko.

For the benefit of newcomers, these ex-state coaches are not true Donnerbüchsen although they were probably used in similar services. Jan - if we are talking about Liliput's ex-Badenian models 334000-03, they are all different lengths, according to Kern. Oh and apparently Trix did wooden-style luggage van in the 1990s - model number 23302.

Thanks everyone for the excellent replies to my question. This thread has become an excellent primer on Donnerbüchsen. It struck me as a type of car that has been available to the modeler for many, many, years but has never modeled all that accurately or with much attention to it's varied history. Always sold as a type of general representation of a concept. I'm glad to hear some manufacturers, such as Brawa, are correcting this issue and others, such as Fleischmann, do an excellent job for the general type. I just wish the Brawa cars were not 2.5x more expensive then the Fleischmann here in the states.