Welcome to Z Scale Rail in New Zealand

By way of introduction... Z Scale seems to be the Cinderells of modelling scales in NZ. It offers unique challenges to its fans: it is fiddly to work with, expensive to buy, and accessories are often hard to find. But for those willing to get past these minor obstacles, it can be very rewarding. It is compact, cute, and commercial rolling stock is reliable and uniformly of high quality.

My first Z layout (since demolished) started in 2015 - 8 metres of track, 8 metres of catenary, long tunnels - and working wind turbines - all in a 1200 x 600mm footprint. The outflow pipes at the front hide the switches for the points. The buildings are all laser-cut models of iconic NZ buildings: Plischke's Henderson house in Alexandra, John Scott's Futuna Chapel in Karori and Philip King's Ohura Bowling Club. The bridge in the centre is a laser-cut model based on the Oresund bridge joining Denmark and Sweden. Back then, DCC for Z scale was still a distant dream because no-one made decoders small enough to fit inside Z scale locomotives. Using catenary was the only way to have two locomotives running safely on the same layout with independent control.

 

 

A partial view (below) of my second layout (also since demolished) under construction.  This was much larger (3100 x 500mm), based on a standard Märklin layout design but with an airport terminal added, and incorporating a mix of plastic kits and laser-cut items such as the power pylons. This time there are no tunnels - I'm a quick learner!  Murphy decrees that whenever a locomotive becomes derailed, it is always in the most inaccessible spot, preferably a tunnel with 3 lines of catenary. This layout has no inaccessible spots, and no catenary! It still allows two locomotives to run simultaneously by keeping the inner and outer loops electrically isolated.

 

Layout 3 (below) is something completely different. Using the expertise of a glassblower friend, I made an elevated track and futuristic landscape entirely out of glass. The footprint is 1200 x 400mm.  Only the track, which is a simplified dogbone, is not made from glass.  The structures include stylized copies of Sky Tower and Stockholm's Ericsson Dome. The picture below shows a goods steam train passing through the station. I could have made it DCC, but with only one small loop, it seemed a bit unnecessary.

 

Layout 4 (below) replaced Layout 1, and is a work in progress inspired by the canals and locks of central Sweden. This layout also combines commercially available kits and laser-cut models. Eventually the train, bridge over the canal and boat slipway will (I hope) be controlled by a Raspberry Pi. This is the only layout I have done designed from the outset to be DCC and is by far the most technically challenging, although it has the shortest track of all my layouts - only 1.5 metres.