times since the counter was installed.
NOTE: Page size is limited by HTML to some 30kB;
thus, I have been forced to add new pages just for Z-Scale, more Z-scale, and articles about Z-scale.
Berlinerwerke-Z Saga
Z scale is about 2½ times smaller than HO! In Z scale, a scale ¼-mile is exactly (and only) 6 feet; in other words, a mile is only 24 feet!
Because much information about Z scale is in German, you might find Chris Ozdoba's Eisenbahn- und Modellbahn-Wörterbuch - Deutsch-Englisch / Railroad and Model Railroading Dictionary - German-English of value.
HOMABED® roadbed, a roadbed made from milled HOMASOTE ® is available in Z-scale (1:220)! It had been brought out by Scott Grubbs, who advised (03 Feb 00) that it was already outselling N-scale roadbed! The Z line was written up in the Nov/Dec 1999 Ztrack Magazine (but the sample reviewed was only 12" long and the roadbed actually comes in 32" lengths. The product is now made by Richard Jayne of California Roadbed Co., Inc.
It currently comes only in Z/Nn3 Scale (16' to a box) with a top width of 0.630", a thickness of 0.175" (4.45mm), a 45° bevel. Curvable sections only have a minimum rated radius of 7.5" (which works out to 190mm) and I found it virtually impossible to bring them down to the standard 145mm.
Mr. Jayne, who I met at the National TRain Show in Seattle on 09 Jul 2004, will work with me to provide a more flexible curve and also possibly to bring out turnout blocks for standard Märklin turnouts and crossings.
I had met Scott Grubbs at the Amherst Show in Feb 2000
aat the great Springfield (Mass.) show, and what a day
he'd had! HOMABED sold like hotcakes! Scott
had sent me a sample to test.
(13 Aug 04)
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Hey, who needs 1:440 or 1:900? Here's the Boxcab loco kit from Freudenreich Feinwerktechnik and it's a jewel! Look at this!
(photos 07 Oct 99 by and © 1999 S. Berliner, III)
[Instead of thumbnail images, I give you both scale (on my 14' monitor) and enlarged images.]
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Here she is! On 09 May 00, I received my new Ztrack transformer car, well-flat with demountable transformer (it's held in by a screw up through the bottom). It is exquisite (even the underside has wood slat detail in the well!):
You can see these illustrations on the Aspen Website (click on "Parts - Z") but I thought these deserved even more coverage, so here they are:
On their Website, Aspen also lists (but doesn't show) other Westmodel superdetailing parts, a 40 033 pilot beam with snowplow for steam locomotives and a 40 034 old-time cow catcher for steam locomotives.
Now, this is the kind of fine (in both senses of the word) work that makes Z scale so much fun (and destroys eyesight)!
O.K.! Now, for his next trick, Herr Freudenreich has completed a Gunderson Husky stack car, the well of which will accept standard Märklin containers; here is a production sample (an ample sample):
And here is Harald's latest hopper, decorated for the Frisco:
Ron Ruddell runs
London Bridge Collector's Toys, Ltd. at 16 South 3rd Street, Emmaus,
Pennsylvania 18049, 610-967-6887 (
Lbt@londonbridgetoys.com). He not only sells
and repairs military miniatures but he makes them,
AND he sells Z scale, AND he even makes a
line of vehicles in Z! Ron was kind enough to
host a meeting of NE regional Zed-Heads on 09 Sep 00
and I found these vehicles (and, of course, had to buy
them):
(street address - 07 Jun 05)
These are: upper left - ZV11 Flatbed Truck, upper right - ZV1 Bus,
lower left - ZV10 Dump Truck, and lower right - ZV3 Caterpillar Tractor.
PENNZEE Products, Inc., 1333 Crums Mill Road, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17112, has a line of "Quickits", color-printed and prepunched cardstock building kits - just fold and glue! Four kits of five buldings each (the difference is in the style in which they are printed - red brick, yellow/tan brick, gray/white brick, and clapboard) in four- and five-story apartments with stores, small and large three-story corner stores with offices, and a two-story store with offices:
(photos 06 Nov 00 of PENNZEE #103 Sheet by S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved to PENNZEE)These are all in the "Downtown Stores" series and I had completely misplaced flyers for the PENNZEE #101 (red brick) and #102 (yellow/tan brick) Quickit sets, which I had all along; they turned up by sheer chance and here are details of the small corner store and offices, showing the plain brick of the #101 and the arched windows and belt lines of the #102, for example:
(photos 21 Nov 00 of details of PENNZEE #101 and #102 Sheets by S. Berliner, III -
(24 Sep 04)
For the story of Boxcab Oil-Electric engines (the first diesels), see my Boxcabs page, et seq.
For the story of the Berlinerwerke-Z (my layout), see the Berlinerwerke-Z Saga page, et. seq.
For tall tales of the BW and its equipment and such, visit the Berlinerwerke Apocrypha page.
For more and better illustrations of the tall tales and such, keep in touch; I have my digital camera (11 Jan 99 - a belated Xmas present - an SLR, no less!), the requisite software loaded, and scads of server storage space. Now, all I have to do is take more pictures.
See also the main Z page, the preceding page, and the Z-scale articles page.
For Ztrack Magazine, see its new
separate page.
(30 Aug 05)
Lájos also sells Z-scale trees (TreeZ?) commercially, as Zthek and I got (06 Jun 00) a set for review - oh, WOW! Here's a pic of the set as received and one without all that careful packaging (I TOLD that orchardman to trim those branches back!):
In Magyar (the Hungarian language), "God is one" is written "Egy az Isten",
so, naturally, I sent it to Lájos as "Egy aZ Isten",
to which he replied that He "created TreeZ too!",
so see the new listing in the
Zictionary.
(26 Sep 05)
(19 Dec 05)
(19 Dec 05)
You know, I'm always writing about someone else's layout, or, occasionally, my own, but I have just now finished a very basic 2' x 5' one for an elderly friend (which means even older than I!) with three ovals (220mmR, 195mmR, and 145mmR) and a siding and a reversing track, separate jacks for two DC feeds and an AC input and lots of room for scenery and growth. Well, I plugged it in and it was all dead-shorted! I'd made a beautiful brass plate to hold the DC and AC jacks on the front panel; how should I know that jacks short to metal? I couldn't find any plain, unplated, unpunched PCB sheet, so I made a beautiful Formica substitute and now only about half the controls are shorted. With over 50 separate connectors on four circuits with four reversing DPDTs and without any ability whatsoever to stay focused or think logically, this could be a problem. Because of the dual feeds and reversing switches, just disconnecting each line one at a time isn't the whole answer. All the wiring is clustered ("Spaghetti Junction!") behind a 3" x 5" control panel with 7 DPDT selector and reversing switches and 12 SPST block switches, all mini and micro! Oh, my aching eyeballs! Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed! And, as our ship sinks slowly in the West, we bid farewell to lovely - - - .
It's an interesting project; he'd started it on 2¼" foam board with a glossy painted top surface and, of course, all the track fell off as the nails pulled free from the paint (foam won't hold anything). I bonded a 3/16" sheet of Upson board (heavy cardboard) over the whole thing, which takes Märklin track nails beautifully, painted that a flat medium earth color, and built a light-weight frame around and under the foamboard. To save space, I tucked that microscopic control panel in the left front corner and allowed for an equally microscopic turnout control panel in the right front corner, with the above-noted infamous jack panel set into the left front fascia. It never dawned on me that this project would take me years if I'd done it for myself and it has taken many months of hard work; some favor! Maybe I'll write it up further; I developed some rather neat tricks to ease the strain. Well, back to the old drawing (foam?) board.
HELP! - an e-mail correspondent from Switzerland asks if anyone knows where to get a copy of the software used to design layouts, Railways 3.0.
Best regardZ, S.B.,III
The courtesy page for Ztrack Magazine is now on its own page, q.v.
To contact S. Berliner, III, please click here.
To tour the Z-scale pages in sequence, the arrows take you from the Z-scale index page
to the main Z-Scale page, then to the Sub-Z-Scale page and continuation pages 1, 2, 3, and on,
the Z articles page, the 6 BW-Z saga pages, and, and finally to the current Ztrack page.
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