First, some background. I read somewhere that there were a million model railroaders in the United States. Somewhere else, I read that 0.2% use Z as their primary scale and 0.3% use it as a secondary scale. That means only 5000 Z-scalers! No wonder there's such a shortage of products. It also means that those AZL limited runs aren't so limited after all. 150 Cab-Forwards is quite a lot for 5000 modellers. So, how common are common Z products? How many F7s has MTL sold? Or Marklin, for that matter? How would one find out?
I don't know about how many F7's were produced, but all my closest friends are into Z Scale, and each have a few. Here is some rough trivia. About 2500 model railroaders attended the NMRA National Convention in Cincinnati last summer, and at the same time, 100 Z Scalers attended the Z Scale convention in Columbus. That's a 25 to 1 ratio. Last month I attended our local NMRA meet, and there were about 100 guys in attendance. 4 were Z Scalers. Another 25 to 1 ratio. There are about 30 model railroad magazines in the US, and 1 of them is devoted entirely to Z Scale. Hmm! A 30 to 1 ratio. I guess i'm not being very scientivif here, because my numbers are probably off a bit, but not by too much. Lets look some more. In Trainboard's model railroad forums, there are 7 scales represented if you include the narrow gauges forum. there are 10,000 topics and 350 are Z Scale topics. That's about a 30 to 1 ratio. And the total posts of all those forums is 116,000 with 4600 of them Z Scale. A 25 to 1 ratio this time. So maybe the percentages are a little higher, and maybe there are really a lot more Z Scalers out there? Maybe 10,000 or more? -Robert
I expect Z scalers to be overly vocal, because they're the minority. They sort of have to band together. I mean, a rather small number of people make most of the topics and posts. But how many people subscribe to it?
I think a market share of "less than 5%" for Z is realistic. The only information I can add is that I have made nearly 2000 Z-controllers in the last few years.
According to Ztrack, they have about 1500 subscribers. They also print about 500 issues that are distributed by Kalmach. In my LHS, They sold 7 out of 8 issues of Ztrack in their first month of sale. We might be the minority, but we are growing. Housing is getting expensive, and less people can afford to have a room or garage to house a layout. I can just imagine how my wife is goen to take it when I tell her she has to park the van outside, so I can build a big HO layout. More modellers will be like me, where our family gives us a small area in the family room to build a layout.
I don't think you can get a firm number on the number of Z-scalers. I do think it is growing. Many like myself convert from N or other larger scales. I think what happens at first there is a curiosity about Z. So a person buys a starter set and starts to tinker. Then they get a bit by the bug and start to build a layout. Then they really see the possibilities and they make the switch completley over to Z. I think it is all natural progression. Along the way I also think Z will pick up a lot of first time modelers because of its size and now the ablility to operate smoothly. Don't think for a second that small electronics are not fascinating. They are! Phones, TV's, portable music players are all getting smaller. Thus the same will occur with Railroading. In my opinion anyway.
Jeremy, Welcome to Trainboard. I'm sure Rob Kluz will pipe in on this subject eventually, but he told me the other day that his circulation has gone up significantly since they went to Kalmbach for distribution of ZTrack. What's interesting to note is that Rob has said before that there is only about a 50% overlap between ZTrack subscribers and the Z_Scale yahoo group that is now over 1800 members. I think there is some overlap here as well. Not everyone here is on Z_Scale over at yahoogorups. 5000 is probably a pretty good estimate. What is more interesting is that Rob K. (I forget his sources) has also said that the two fastest growing scales in the USA are Z scale and G scale, so the numbers are changing everyday. By the way Rob, there were 120 Z scalers at the Ohio convention and about 75 Z scalers working on the Z displays at NTS and not all of them were the same folks. I think there may actually be two factors at work in Z scale growth. We are seeing a rapid increase in new product releases (even if we never think it's enough and, I'm sure many of you will agree, Z scale is still challenging and fun to scratchbuild and kit bash in. With the growth in ready to run products in larger scales, some folks who actually like to BUILD things are turned off by that. Some folks WANT a chanllenge. What more of a challenge than to micro-miniaturize what you have already had success miniaturizing. And of course, in Z scale, for many things. if you want it, you still have to build it yourself. Randy
Oh yeah, back to the original question, How many F7's. My guess would be that the only Z scale loco more numerous than the MTL F7 would be the Marklin 0-6-0 (at least in the USA). Rob Kluz, again, has said that the Z scalers in the USA are split about 50/50 between North American and European (mostly German, Swiss and Austrian) prototype. Until recently, the MTL workhorse of an F7 and the 2 Marklin steamers and F7 (sort of) were the only North American motive power available. So if you were modeling NA, you probably had multiples of the MTL F7. I'm sure there are lot's of them sitting in shoeboxes in folks closets and attics as well. Randy
I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 F7-As and ten or so B units (about half of them powered). Just the fact that Z scale still exists in The US leads me to believe that there must be at least 10,000 people modelling in the scale. But, many are silent. Many do not go on-line. And, without going on line, I would never have found Z-Track or the Yahoo group. And, those are the numbers that we can track. That's the thing about Z. It's easy to hide. Dan S
I have my GN A-B-A F's and every GN M-T car that I can get my hands on so I'm happy! Now I just wish I had a real GN caboose. By the way, this is post 700 for me!
kurt, what is your example of a real GN caboose? do any of robert's NP cabooses work? are you thinking wide vision? just wanted to know. thanks dave f.
Just a standard North American design with the cupola towards the rear, kinda' like the mass produced Atlas ones.
Oh, and I've seen the new one that Robert's building, it looks more like what I want. Until someone builds a mainstream one, I have a GN M-T caboose that I moved the center cupola towards the rear, crude but effective for now.
Those are nice prototypes, but I model the GN in the mid-fifties, so a standard caboose would be fine. But that's definetely the paint scheme!
