https://secure.intercom.co.jp/ecIntercom/shop/category/category.aspx?category=5030 Looks pretty interesting . . . Garth Hamilton dug this one up and posted it to the Yahoo Z list. Cheers Ben
I did the calculations and $32 for that loco is a great price! I bet I can make a neat RDC out of one of them too!
That controller/transformer looks pretty cool too! And it will run on 110V (Japan is 100V but most gear works fine in the U.S.) It actually uses a wall-wart transformer so it might be a fine controller! I found the home page of the company that produces the trains and transformer (their English page has nothing on the trains but the Japanese page can easily be translated by Babelfish.av.com or if you have it built-in to Firefox/Mozilla; you can't translate the link in the first post because it is a secure page). http://www.akia41.com/
I should add too that the entire controller, track and set can be had for under $US100 which just shows what could be possible if the Japanese could be tempted into Z scale ! Cheers Ben
just paste the url into Google's search box and it will give you a link to the page, translated: here: http://translate.google.com/transla...lr=&newwindow=1&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en
And just imagine if the Chinese decide to get in (beyond Marklin's efforts that is!)...all it takes is a person who can make the CAD/CAM files and production becomes easy... But that it not the problem...the problem is getting enough modellers to adopt Z. O was sucessful because it came first. HO became popular because it was half the scale for smaller homes and greater detail. It has the highest volume. N Scale is just now becoming where HO was 30 years ago and Z is where N was 30 years ago. But we face a shrinking group of hobbyists (look at dwindling NMRA membership and its aging in the U.S.). The good news for Z is it is growing by leaps and bounds-a big part due to many of the posters here on Trainboard and the Yahoo Z Scale group as well as Z Central Station. I'd been out of Model Railroading for about 16-18 years (college) and picked up Z Thanksgiving '04 after visiting FAO Schwartz where I first saw Z and saw it again with my nephew. Off to Ebay I went! And the rest and thousands of dollars later, here we are!
I would imagine that given increased crowding, and smaller house and flat sizes, Z will attract increasing numbers. The Japanese have always preferred N to H0 because of space considerations, but Z is even better than N in that regard. And Z does rather play to one of the strongest suits of Japanese technical know-how, which is making incredibly small pieces of machinery that work very, very well . . . The other postive with Z, something we can now appreciate as plastic US outline diesels emerge in increasing numbers, is that Z has totally avoided what I might call the 'Model Power' stage of development that N went through, where N had a dirt-poor reputation for years because of one of its major suppliers and their locomotives with 'break as soon as you look at them' handrails and motors of similar reliability ! That does rather augur well for the future. Cheers Ben
Britain has always been a bit odd that way . . . there is indeed the Zclub GB which has castings for locos like the A4 Mallard, and the Ellmar 47 was done on the Marklin 8854 type chassis a while back, but yes, it is strange that they've never gone for Z, given their propensity for supporting all sorts of weird scales ! Maybe size of the prototype is the limiting factor ? British trains are prototypically very small- hence the difference in scale between British and European N, and H0 vs 00. Ben
Given that other British scales aren't the same as their US counterparts, were the Zclub GB models actually 1/220?
To be honest, I don't know exactly. The A4 is designed to fit the existing Marklin Pacific chassis so it is going to conform to the dimensions of that chassis, first and foremost. There are a number of other scratchbuilt locos on the group's layout which are probably compromises in some way, in order to fit on sometimes massively altered Marklin chassis. For example an 0-6-2 tank loco and a British 2-8-0. If you go to the UK on holiday, I'd suggest checking the Yahoo group 'Z gauge British and European' to find out when their layout is being exhibited, as it is a rather different example of Z modelling than the usual German or US layouts. Ben
You Americans have more choice than most Europeans have in Z scale. We only have Märklin, and their production line offers German, German and German models. Sometimes, they have a model from another country, but building a French or Dutch layout is nearly impossible. Small manufacturers? I do not know them. And scenery? Kibri makes some German prototype kits, and I have discovered some kits from the Dutch Artitec. That's all..... Despite our small, tiny homes.
It wasn't till the very late 1990's It wasn't till the late 1990's that American Z scale choices began to change. Till then all that was available was the non-prototypical Marklin F7, 2-8-2, & 4-6-2, and Micro-Trains more prototypical F7, & short run Mogul. Thanks to Rogue locomotive Works they introduced the GP-38. When things started to heat up they came out with the C44-9. That is when American Z Line came into being. Took the C44 and ran with it. They haven't stopped running yet. Thanks AZL We Americans haven't gotten all the locos we want yet, and probably never will. That is where the scratch builders and experimenters come in to play! I am working on a American Civil War 4-4-0 locomotive made using the modified chassis of a Marklin 8899 locomotive. Wish me luck! If I can do it, so can you! Hobo Tim
