Minitrix - 16901 - Locomotive, Electric, CFL Class 4000 - CFL - 4007

Specific Item Information: DCC Ready. Accepts mTc 14 plug for digital decoder (Trix 66840).

Prototype History: The CFL class 4000 is a variant of the Bombardier TRAXX locos found working across Europe. Within Luxembourg they work on the local passenger services (crossing the borders into France or Belgium as necessary. They also work freight traffic. Their 15 kV capability allows them to work across the border to Germany. Even though they are capable of running in France, they are not allowed to do so for security reasons.

Their slab sided body work has been used for advertising.

Road Name History: The Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois (Luxembourg National Railway Company, abbreviated CFL) is the national railway company of Luxembourg.
The Luxembourg rail system comprises 275 route-kilometres, of which 140 km is double track and 135 km single track. Of the total track length of 617 km, 574 km are electrified. The majority of the electrified track (526 km) is operated at 25 kV, 50 Hz, though some 48 km are run at 3 kV DC.

CFL freight provides high-quality regional feeder services and international rail freight services, in cooperation with its subsidiaries in Denmark, Germany, France and Sweden, CFL also offers single wagon load services to its customers and has extensive experience with oversize load transportation. ​CFL freight has two primary divisions involved with Rail: CFL Cargo and CFL Multimodal.

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Brand/Importer Information: Trix is a German company that originally made Trix metal construction sets. one of its co-founders was Stephan Bing, the son of the pioneer toy-maker industrialist Ignaz Bing. In 1935 the company began producing the electrically powered model trains that it became famous for, under the Trix Express label. Prior to the outbreak of World War II the Trix company produced a small range of fairly unrealistic AC powered three rail models running at 14 volts.

N gauge models under the Minitrix brand were made from the late 1960s mostly of European prototypes (German and British primarily). North American prototypes were also manufactured and marketed under the Aurora "Postage Stamp" brand; later these items were sold under the American Tortoise, Model Power and Con-Cor brands. Trix sometimes utilized North American consultants to aid in the design of this portion of the product line. The "Hornby Minitrix' brand was used in the 1980s for a short lived range of British outline models using the earlier product tooling.

Trix's owner in the 1980s and 1990s was Mangold, which went bankrupt in the late 1990s and Märklin purchased the assets in January 1997. In part, this purchase was a reflection of Märklin's need for added production capacity; Trix had been manufacturing certain items for Märklin in previous years. The purchase was also in response to the earlier purchase of the Karl Arnold company by the Italian company Rivarossi; Märklin were very keen to take over Trix market share in 2-rail H0 and especially Minitrix, until then Märklin had not marketed N gauge models. In 2003, Märklin introduced its first N gauge models under the well established Minitrix brand. A number Märklin H0 scale three-rail AC locomotives have also been introduced in two-rail DC versions under the Trix logo and many models are shared between the two brands.

From Wikipedia