The last big box arrives (for a while, at least)

The new V200 looked rather silly pulling a handful of freight cars around the layout.  Seriously, a proud express locomotive relegated to a local freight?  Not cool.  So last week a big box arrived, the last I will see for a while (lottery win notwithstanding):

Yup, that's an HO scale V100 on top of the box...

One train car I have always loved is the AR4üm-54.  This dining car is more well known by its nickname, the 'Kakadu', so named because of its bright red and blue colors.  Marklin has recently reintroduced it in 1-gauge.

Lucky for me, I can create a prototypical train with my V200 and a Kakadu dining car.  It's called an F-Zug, a precursor to the Intercity train system in Germany and the inspiration for the Trans Europe Express trains.  These exclusively 1st class trains ran with minimum stops and with strong motive power from the 1950's through the 1960's.  The picture on the cover of the book below is the closest thing I could find to the train I want to model, a short F-Zug:

So after waiting nearly a year since ordering them, my F-Zug cars arrived, and yesterday my V200 finally had a train worthy of its status:

 It occurred to me shortly after I ordered the coaches that I had no idea if they could negotiate past another train on the parallel curve.  So, holding my breath, I parked a long freight train on the inside trach and sent the new passenger train around the sharp S-curve:

   I'm pleased to say that the two trains do not touch anywhere as they go around the entire layout.  Although I can't run these long passenger cars on both tracks and not have them touch when passing each other, the combination of one freight train on the inside track and my F-Zug on the outside track avoid any problems.

Whew!