well the show season has finished for another year and most of the rig has been put away until we start up again in March 2017. the back end of the year has seen a lot of long haul exhibitions and culminated in two of the busiest events featuring Shasta. Shoeburyness club in Essex held their busy annual event in Southend on Sea and Shasta was displayed in standard ten foot long form At the Manchester Christmas show, one of the BIG traditional shows, I took the layout in its 'long form' with the additional 'Dunsmuir' board. The hall was arranged so that the public could come around to see the other side and to make it even better we were in front of an emergency exit ramp rising up behind it which meant that wheelchair users and little kids had a better chance of seeing what was running. It also meant they could see all the behind the scenes clutter! At both shows it ran pretty near perfectly apart from strangeness at Manchester as follows... The long intermodal train running on the outer track had run like a Swiss watch for a couple of hours but the hall was getting quite warm so the stewards opened the exit door to let some cool air in. on a perfectly plain piece of track we started to get random uncouplings. All of the rail joints were O.K and there was no sign of heat buckling on the track. Door shut ten minutes later back to perfect running. 30 minutes later door open and more random uncoupling. the saving grace being that gently setting the train back to the dropped freight cars coupled back up perfectly and was able to go forward once again. Video, not including the uncoupling at Soundtrack is 'paperback Bible' by Lambchop
I picked up three Rokuhan DD51s off ebay the other day. I wasn't planning on buying any diesels as Republic Steel, My steelworks layout, was always intended to run just steam locos when displayed in Japanese form but the starting price was too tempting. I won three out of the four listed which I was not expecting. Having had a play with them I thought I'd do a video review of the model. I haven't done one of these for a while and as many people seem unaware of the way Z has advanced in Japan over the last few years it seemed a good time to update those not in the know. I got two in the Euroliner colour scheme and one in the standard Red/grey Video review at Kev
On t×he toss has needle eyed logging layout t would like to see a track plan, and module size. I love the layout. I want to build a logging layout and my wife won't let me set up my T track layout in the house. I have a 6x12 space for a logging layout in a shed if I build one. Love the layout.
Oh my gosh-logging in Z scale!! Awesome!! Some amazing details that you only see in bigger scale layout, simply awesome!!
I love the juice train! Did you make your own box cars or did you find them somewhere? Haven't been able to find any in Z scale. Would love to have them for my model. The juice train rolls through Philly right next to my favorite dog park.
AZL makes the Tropicana and other reefers. They've been available for quite a while. Check your favorite Z retailer.
Of course, they do. How could I have been so blind. Thanks for the heads up. (Side note: is AZL the highest quality Z scale manufacturer outside of Marklin? They're locos and rolling stock are much more expensive than Microtrains.)
Currently the only available Microtrains loco is the old fashioned F7. Robust, reliable, pulling like mules, but noisy and jerky. In short, no way comparable to any AZL loco with its silent, smooth, powerful and reliable mechanism. Former GP35s, GP9s as well as SD40-2s were comparable to AZL motive power speaking of their running caracteristics and with about the same detail level, although ~ 1 scale foot too broad. And their prices were in the same range as AZL's. Dom
Marklin actually partnered with AZL on the E units, and and it was all AZL's manufacturing, so I think Marklin recognizes that AZL is high quality. Detail levels and variety available are far superior to anything MTL has released in quite some time. All my opinions only, of course.
Rapido announces their N scale Turbo train, (with some AMAZING sound - with great effects) but . . . .you have to wait until the end, for an important Z scale announcement !
45 minutes of z scale cab rides... taken at Altenbeken, 2016. Includes well known layouts such as Kniephafen and Niles Junction... Enjoy. And don't forget to turn up for Altenbeken 2018, april 14-15, Germany For USA interests.. check at 8.53'' Black Oil Railroad, at 21.23'' Red Spider Canyon, at 30' car float at Niles Junction.. Matt
Having now got over the last few exhibitions and with a gap before I go out again ( Republic at Bradford and Shasta in long form at Derby) in May I,ve got a chance to catch up with some things I've been promising to do. One of my youtube subscribers asked if I was planning on doing anymore Rokuhan reviews, which I was, but developing the Railbue British stock for Republic has been time consuming. So the next one is on the C11 2-6-4T. I've had one for a while Seen here trundling a mixed freight past the blast furnace as a pair of D51s head the other way And on a short pass working Video at Cheers Kev
