(Moved here from the main Z page and Z page 2 on 01 Mar 01)
Parkway Diner and Phone Booth
(photos from Miller site)
Now, to celebrate the Third Millennium, and to sit alongside the Z diner or phone booth shown above, here's a trio of Ford Model Ts in Z! µart (MicronArt), which makes elegant brass structures, has released a 1911 Touring Car (#1021, with removable cloth top!), a 1913 Van (#1017), and a 1923 Stake Bed Truck (#1019):
(Images courtesy of, and by specific permission of, Micron Art - all rights reserved to micron Art)
[These are thumbnails, but are a little different than usual;
click on the photos to bring up larger images
with the etched sheets from which each kit is assembled.
These kits come two vehicles per sheet/kit - anyone want to split a pair of
trucks (one van, one stake) with me?
In addition, but never shown here before, µA makes elegant, microscopic baggage
carts (#1007, 4 per kit) and a hand car in Z (#1013?, 2 per kit) , as well:
(Images courtesy of, and by specific permission of, Micron Art - all rights reserved to micron Art)
Neal's N-Gauging Trains has branched out from N to Z and offers etched brass kits of a carousel, bandstand (gazebo), gravestones, bicycles, phone booths, trucks and handcarts, benches, platform accessories, tips, and horse carts; here are two as teasers:
(Images courtesy of, and by specific permission of, Neal's n-Gauging Trains -
all rights reserved to Neal's)
[01 mar 01 - Neal's site does not yet show the Z items, but will soon.]
Neal advises that he is adding trees, an Amish buggy, a summer house (Euro prototype), Victorian Carriage, and a Hansom cab.
While not a Z product per se, but rather a very useful measuring tool for Z (or any scale), here is a tiny, folding pocket magnifier with calibrated scales, that I found unused and unrecognised. It appears to be made of nickel silver, is German, and is probably fairly old. The scales, on the "x" and "y" axes, measure 10mm x 10mm and the magification is a full 2.5x because the scales appear to be 1" (25.4mm) when seen through the glass. The inscription reads "Küttner Viskose u. Kupfer - Kunstseide", "Küttner" being a name, "viskose" meaning viscose, and "kupfer" meaning copper, while "kunstseide" is artificial silk (rayon). A firm, Küttner GmbH & Co. KG, in Essen, exists, in the iron, steel, and copper business! What viscose has to do with anything beats me. I have inquired to see if they can identify this instrument; my guess is that it was used to count or measure strands of spun viscose polymer.
(photos 16 Jan 01by and © 2001 S. Berliner, III -all rights reserved)
I wonder just how old this magnifier is. Lest you wonder, the top and bottom rotate 270° to fold flat and unfold.
Now, this is not microscopic, but the Märklin #8999 track nails come close, and the standard nailers for HO and N have been revised to handle the Märklin nails. They are magnetized to hold the nail and are well made:
(Images courtesy of Laster Hobby Tools - all rights reserved)
They are available as Item #10301 at $12.00 (as of 24 Oct 01) + $5.50 per order shipping from:
Laster Hobby Tools, 4 Tupelo Lane, Langhorne, PA 19047
215-750-9641
Toll free number (for orders only): 1-888-469-0404
Marvin Laster attends the major shows (Greenberg, Amherst, etc.) and sells an outstanding line of tools suitable for Z work; he has a catalog available for $1.00 refundable with first order.
[Please note that Laster Hobbies now has its own Website, as linked, above.]
How about the diametral opposite of a Z phone booth? At
Oddities on RR page 3, I mention the
Anhalter Bahnhof (Deutsche URL) in Berlin, the largest trainshed in
existence (an HO model is 6' long!), and that there was an HO cardstock model of it
as it stood before being blasted into a hulk in WWII (even more at
ANHALTER BAHNHOF on RR page 4, with both a large-scale model, perhaps 1:10,
and an HO model). On 30 Mar 01, I found where I saw that:
Modelle-und-Spielhaus on the north side of the Friedrichstraße a few blocks west of
Checkpoint Charlie (ca. 27 Sep 1987). Now, wouldn't THAT make a dandy
model in Z (ca. 28½" = 72.4cm!)? Bigger than many layouts!
Does anyone have actual dimensions and plans for this station?
MIBA Magazine
suggested doing it in HO.
Seems rather unlikely; it turns out that "MiBa" is
Michael Baier, the RR ('bahn") part of whose
fantastic German-language site covers, among many other things, both
RR Schnabel cars and equivalent Road Loads!
YEE-HAH! Märklin went and did it! #89200 ist
die Anhalter Bahnhof!
(14 Mar 03)
From the Märklin description, the #89200 Z Gauge Building Kit for Anhalter Station
gives you a model with the concourse with three entry portals (they neglected to
mention that each has two tracks), the head building with lobby, waiting room, and
service and administration buildings at the sides, and many details. Märklin
describes it as a "challenging kit"! The base measures approximately 34" x
18" (87.0 x 46.0 cm) {"approximately" - at THAT size?} and the imposing edifice is
approximately 7" (18.0 cm) high.
Since it is actually a stub-terminal, not a through-station, trains have to be backed in;
what a great shelf layout this could make!
If you think about it, it's really rather funny that such a gigantic terminal only services
six tracks; compare it to to Philadelphia's or New York's giant old Penn Stations, with
well over twenty tracks in the sheds, not to even mention Chicago's or St. Louis's or
Washington's huge Union Stations, just to name a few. Anhalt is an area, not
a specific town, roughly 50-100Km (30-150 miles) southwest of Berlin, around Dessau.
Some of the Allied bombers that did in the Anhalter Bahnhof were escorted to their
target by Lockheed P-38 Lightnings and I found this one at the Mar 01 Greenberg
show (several vendors had it):
[20 Oct 05 grab-shot (to substitute for Mar 01 photo) by and © Copyright 2005 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved]
It was also available in silver/alumin(i)um and measures out to exactly 1:227; more
than close enough for Z!
HERMAPHRODITE (CONVERSION COUPLER) CARS
Speaking of microscopic, nothing beats the Märklin and Micro-Trains coupler springs;
changing or fitting them in coupler conversions is the world's worst chore!
Some of you may well be intrigued by the cars placed behind the P-38; they are
"hermaphrodite" cars, a prototypical term for cars with different couplers at
each end. I have made them from Märklin #8610 flat cars (or equivalent) but
the conversion is a bugger! I opt for the easy way out, using a pair of
Micro-Trains #14500-series flats (#14504 in this case), removing the Märklin-style
couplers from one end of each car, drilling (there's a dimple) and tapping 00-90, and
fitting a pair of M-T #905 (assembled #903) couplers to the cars. Lą, voilą:
[20 Oct 05 grab-shot (to substitute for Mar 01 photos) by and © Copyright 2005 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved]
Note the fantastic difference in appearance between the Märklin-style coupling
distance and appearance and the M-T Magnematic® version.
However, that is not the intended use; these cars allow coupling up in any variety of
any kind of car to any other kind of car or loco. By using them alone, a stock
Märklin loco can pull M-T equipped cars and v.v.; using them in pairs allows a
mismatched car (or cars) to be inserted into a train without conversion.
[I could be prevailed upon to make up other sets.]
Well, now! Harald Freudenreich keeps on amazing me! He just made up
a little cog railway boxcab electric loco but the writeup filled this page and I had to put
up yet another Z page (6) and move it!
(Images Apr-May 01 by H. Freudenreich - all rights reserved)
One of my off-line industries (unless I can find a space to cram in yet another) is
Dehydra Ted - Dehydrated Water, Theodore A. Queous, Prop. - operator of
the 20,000,000 gal. tanker!
[We owe the basic concept to (blame it on?) George Johnstone, at
Emmaus, PA - 21 Jul 01.]
(Photo by and © 2001 S.Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
Hey! I SAID it was dehydrated water!
Hey, again; it could be just a small office with a big sign and a bunch of skinny tanks tucked in the near left corner, alongside the dummy spur into the Restinghouse plant! Another trick to save space would be to have BIG horizontal ¾-tanks overlapping the inner edge of the layout front framing.
Best regardZ, S.B.,III
Someone else signs off, "Be Z'ing you!"
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The courtesy page for Ztrack Magazine is now on its own page, q.v.
Consultant in Ultrasonic Processing
Technical and Historical Writer, Oral Historian
Popularizer of Science and Technology
Rail, Auto, Air, Ordnance, and Model Enthusiast
Light-weight Linguist, Lay Minister, and Putative Philosopher
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 poage 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.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III -
2001, 2002, 2003,
2005
- All rights reserved.
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