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 Springfield (Mass.) in Feb 2000 and what a day he'd had! HOMABED sold like hotcakes! Scott had sent me a sample to test.
While at Springfield, I picked up an interesting Z electric boxcab; see it on Boxcabs.
Page 5 - Electric Boxcabs.
- - - * - - -
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 1999 by and © 1999 S. Berliner, III)
[Instead of thumbnail images, I give you both scale (on my 14' monitor) and enlarged images.]
Freudenreich completed (Dec 1999) a 36' Coke Car (with extended side and end sheets) to go with his 60-ton Boxcab decorated for U. S. Steel and ARMCO (American Rolling Mills).
(photo by Freudenreich - all rights reserved)
- - - * - - -
Here she is! On 09 May 2000, 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!):
[11 May 2000 photo by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.]
Made for, and sold by, Ztrack editor Rob Kluz, BM-WC110 is a six-axle black well car with a giant grey transformer and M-T couplers and trucks. These are all
the work of Bob Marotta (who makes those tiny Z 1936 coupés shown elsewhere). The wellflat car is available separately as BM-WC100 and the trafo alone as BM-TR100. It arrived
slightly damaged; the far left insulator had snapped off and the delicate brakestaffs were bent. No biggie; I cemented the insulator back and straightened the brake staffs quite easily.
They don't look straight to you? Guess what? They're not! They WERE when I started to set up the shot but by the time I snapped the shutter, they had drifted part way back again!
What's going on here - some sort of shape-memory wire? Risking wrecking a brand-new model, I tried bending them back with the same results again - ZOOP - bent again! Nothing loathe,
I bent them the other way (worse), and they straightened up most of the way.
- - - * - - -
Superdetailed
Z Scale Valve Gear!
On the inside front cover of Ztrack Magazine for March/April 2000, Aspen Model has an ad featuring Westmodel Z engines and cars, a steam rotary plow, an an old
engine house. However, down at the bottom of the ad, Aspen shows three Westmodel "Super detailed Running and Valve Gear Kits", No. 34312 for the Märklin 8885 4-6-2, No. 34313 for
the Märklin 8801/05/95/97 0-6-0T, and No. 34315 for the Märklin 8896/83/84.
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:
(Images from Aspen Website - by permission)
The 8896 is a tank Mikado 2-8-2 and the picture shows gear for four axles but the 8883/84 is a 2-10-0 Decapod with FIVE axles - there is a fourth side rod supplied for that. I've
asked Aspen whether they supply rivets and a setting tool.
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):
(photo by Freudenreich - all rights reserved)
And here is Harald's latest hopper, decorated for the Frisco:
(photo by Freudenreich - all rights reserved)
More on both of these models is at the FR Freight Cars section of my Freudenreich Feinwerktechnik page.
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 2000 and I found these vehicles (and, of course, had to buy them):
12 Sep 2000 photo by and © 2000 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.]
These are: upper left - ZV11 Flatbed Truck, upper right - ZV1 Bus,
lower left - ZV10 Dump Truck, and lower right - ZV3 Caterpillar Tractor.
Ron also makes a pair of VW (old) Beetles, but I have too many Märklin VW Bugs already. Actually, I bought two tractors; I'll put a dozer blade on one. The bus
is so undeniably European with that tarp-covered roof luggage rack that I'll use it for a crew bus as is rather than file the rack off. It doesn't show but the flat
bed is on a diffferent chassis than the dump bed; that under the flat bed is extended and has a spare tire/wheel mounted underneath at the rear.
PENNZEE Products, Inc., 1333 Crums Mill Road, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17112, had 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:
(20 Apr 2017)
(photos 06 Nov 2000 of PENNZEE #103 Sheet by S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved to PENNZEE)
[Thumbnail images - click on the pictures for larger images.]
The #103 gray/white brick set is shown. I've seen these kits and the structures made from them and they are FABULOUS!
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 2000 of details of PENNZEE #101 and #102 Sheets by S. Berliner, III -
all rights reserved to PENNZEE)
[* - Quickits are long out of production.
(20 Apr 2017)]
At the 17 Nov 2002 meet of the so-called "Northeast Zed-Heads" in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, hosted by Ron Ruddell/London Bridge, Ron was kind enough to buy a four-pack from Bob Olson and split it
for me; here is my brand-new PennZee 40' steel Great Northern/Western Fruit Express reefer, road number #68242:
18 Nov 2002 photo by and © 2002 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved
(image to be reshot when I find my missing closeup lenses)
I forgot all about reshooting the WFEX car when I got a new goodie on 24 Sep 2004; "the Colonel", Hal Carstens, late publisher of RMC and R&R, is one of my all-time favorites in the hobby and
I somehow missed the NMRA's issue of "The Living Legends Limited Edition Car No. 4... Hal Carstens' Susquehanna Northern". I couldn't resist and ordered it in Z; it's a PennZee (Bowser)
100-ton three-bay hopper with a prodigiously-heaped coal load:
24 Sep 2004 photo by and © 2004 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved
That's Hal, dollied up as a Southern colonel, smiling out at you from the "Route of the Colonel" logo.
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 Z -scale 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 1999 - 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 separate page.
Zthek
For a really beautiful Euro-style layout, visit Hungarian-cum-Californian Lájos Thek's layout at http://www.zthek.com/ (new URL 30 Aug 2005).
Lájos makes some really nice locos and accessories for Z scale (30 Aug 2005).
Lájos also sells Z-scale trees (TreeZ?) commercially, as Zthek and I got (06 Jun 2000) 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!):
[06 Jun 2000 photos by and © 2000 - S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved.]
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.
Lájos has his own site, so I don't try to cover his every offering but THIS YA GOTTA SEE! He takes the Märklin 8800-style 0-6-0T chassis and chops
it up, drops the center axle, and dummies the outer axles (á là FR) et le voilà, an SW-1 in Z!!! (26 Sep 2005)
[photos courtesy of L. Thek - all rights reserved.]
Here are the guts of the beast and a detail of the finished product:
[photos courtesy of L. Thek - all rights reserved.]
Next, here she is on her introductory run on the massed layouts at the July 2005 NTS in Cincinnati (from a photo by Randy Smidt) (19 Dec 05):
[cropped from photo by R. Smidt, courtesy of L. Thek - all rights reserved.]
[Background - yes, that's part of a huge string of Triple Crown Road Railers that Jeff White and Tim Buehring had at the 2005 NTS - but NOT running (top heavy).]
You are cordially invited to examine, and even to participate in, the new RR message board-cum-forum, "Trainboard", at http://www.trainboard.com/,
administered by Charlie Dix, et al. I don't do rings, fora, chat groups, or such. Charlie needs people with Z Scale expertise to participate and is looking for that special person
to moderate the Z Scale board. I can't resist this: "Good luck, Charlie!", but I do mean it nicely.
Zictionary
The Zictionary has been moved to a new Page 1, et seq.; click here to go there.
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.
If you know, please advise "Kristian D" at < swissair@postoffice.pacbell.net >.
Best regardZ, S.B.,III
Someone else signs off, "Be Z'ing you!"
You may wish to visit the Railroad Continuation Page, et seq.
of this series of Railroad pages.
LEGACY
What happens to all this when I DIE or (heaven forfend!)
lose interest? See LEGACY.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
See Copyright Notice on primary home page.
THUMBS UP!
THUMBS UP! - Support your local police, fire, and emergency personnel!
Contact S. Berliner, III
(Junk and unsigned e-mail and blind telephone messages will NOT be answered)
To tour the Z-scale pages in sequence, the arrows take you from the first Z-scale page to the Z-Scale index,
then to continuation pages 1 and up, the Z articles page, the 6 BW-Z saga pages,
and finally to the former then-current Ztrack page.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III -
1999, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2011, 2013,
2017
- all rights reserved.
Return to Top of Page
- The vast bulk of my massive Web presence (over 485 pages) had been hosted by AT&T's WorldNet service since 30 May 1996; they dropped
WorldNet effective 31 Mar 2010 and I have been scrambling to transfer everything. Everything's saved but all the links have to be changed, mostly by hand.
See my sbiii.com Transfer Page for any updates on this tedious process.
Berlinerwerke-Z Saga
Z scale is about 2&frc12; 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!