Waterfront Project | First Track Plan
Now we get to the scary part of the Waterfront Project, for me that’s that track planning. I’ve come up with, and discarded, several ideas already but I think the track plan on this page has some legs. I consider this to be version 1 (v.1) and there will be changes, but I believe it […]
Bridges In Florida
Who hasn’t gone web surfing and ended up in a strange place on YouTube? Lots and lots of odd stuff out there that for some reason has been captured for posterity. Occasionally though something genuinely useful comes along and while the amateur plot lines may be rough, the content is interesting. I’m not sure how […]
Waterfront Project | Build 1
It’s been a couple of months since the last Waterfront Project update so I thought it best to get a clean start as the actual layout construction begins. Since we have the buildings built, the best place to start was to get a general feel for where these kits would sit on the base. Though […]
Collecting In Z Scale
I’ve never been much of a Z scale collector myself, I simply tend to buy and keep what I like. I was wondering recently if the wave of good quality trains available from AZL and MTL haven’t put a dent into the Z scale collector market? This is a purely unscientific observation on my part […]
More And More Z Scale
Maybe it’s all the new Z scale products coming down the line, maybe it’s just the season for it, but I’ve been a Z scale website-building demon lately! A couple of weeks back the finishing touches went on the new AZL website (www.americanzline.com) and for the past week I’ve been working on our newest sales […]
Mea Maxima Z Scale Culpa
Too much stuff, never enough time… sort of. Over the past couple of months it’s been been like going back to school for me, lots of new websites being built which means lots of cracking books, or PDFs, and learning how to make them all work. Several different open source software packages and their related […]
The Coffee Break Blog
One of the features we had on the previous incarnation of Ztrains.com was a weekly Coffee Break section. We’d feature new products, ideas, techniques… really anything even remotely related to Z scale model trains. Since we now have our shiny new site (Ok, it’s been live now for over a year!), I thought I’d bring […]
Locos We Need In Z Scale
The 2012 National Z Scale Convention wrapped up last weekend in Denver, Colorado, and I think lots of folks are now wondering… when do we get some of the Z scale goodies that were announced? Without going over every new product that the major manufacturers showed off or spoke about, I have to admit there […]
Pelle K. Soeeborg
When you’re involved in model railroading for awhile there are a handful of notable names you’ll come across time and time again, people whose modeling work stands out from the rest. Pelle K. Soeeborg is definitely one of these names. When I began looking at model railroad scenery set in the US Southwest, I’d come […]
Digital Command Control | DCC
What Is DCC? Digital Command Control (DCC) allows multiple model trains on the same section of track to operate independently of each other. Independent locomotive speed, direction and effects such as lighting are all possible through DCC. Developed by Lenz of Germany for Marklin in the 1980s, Lenz donated the technology to the National Model […]
