Category: Blog
Good Economy For Z Scale?
With the recent opening of our own Ztrains Store, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the business of Z scale is now doing in the current economy. While I don’t know the numbers of the larger Z scale players like AZL or MTL, in many ways I’d think the business of hobbies should do […]
Occupy Z Scale (aka The Coffee Party)
I like revolutions, not full blown let’s burn the thing to the ground revolutions, but smaller and more focused ones. Pretty much everyone in the US, and likely worldwide, has heard of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. Without getting into the politics or the specifics of either group, what I find appealing […]
Stress Free Z
Here at Ztrains we’ve recently; last night actually, reopened our own Ztrains Store. As with many things in model railroading, schedules and deadlines are sometimes more… flexible than we plan. Personally, I lean on the old chestnut: It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish that counts. Plans and schedules are great things to […]
Z-Panzer | K5 Railgun
In these interview articles I generally ask the questions and the interviewee answers, but for this article I asked Andy Hart of Z-Panzer to talk directly to our readers and share a bit of the thought, design and production processes that went in to this magnificent Z scale model. These photos were shot in low […]
Hurricane Irene | August 2011
Here on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, things are getting back to normal after Hurricane Irene blew through this past weekend, Saturday and Sunday, August 27th and 28th. Leading up to the storm I figured the weather forecasters were exaggerating and the worst that would happen is that we’d lose power for […]
Black Poly Fiber
I liked the way the new diorama was coming along, highlighted by the Fast Tracks #8 turnout and supported with an array of soils and multiple static grass colors applied. Since I’m not using any rock castings on this scene I wanted to add something else, maybe some bushes or general scrub around the tracks […]
A Quick Diorama
I don’t know why I always do this, I begin what I think will be a quick little project and before I know it, it’s not! This time out I wanted to build a very simple and fairly generic scene on which I would shoot some photos of the Z-Panzer K5 rail gun for an […]
RSLaser Kits
Over the past few years we’ve seen the rise of desktop, midsized and large format laser cutters making their way into the hands of Z scale kit designers. Machines that once would have been completely out of reach for the small business owner are now being used to create the modestly priced kits most of […]
Point-And-Shoot Finale
When last we wrote of our camera for Z scale saga I had just purchased a used Nikon 8800 bridge camera and was waiting on its arrival. The Nikon 8800 was built to be a bit more than a standard point-and-shoot but short of a DSLR, a bridge between the two. The 8800 arrived and […]
Z-Panzer Eyeing North America?
I received an email earlier today from Andy Hart of Z-Panzer, a company based in England producing WWII military models in Z scale. I own several of Z-Panzer’s models including their BP42, Panzerzug armored train set; it’s an amazing thing to see on the desk in front of me. I also have Andy’s recent model […]
