My Z Layout
     I built this layout several years ago. I call it a model railroad rather than a toy train because I spent a lot of time putting in details to make it look real. The guage designation, "Z", means that
this is the smallest comercially available scale of model railroading: the rails are less than 1/2"
apart. This is a pain for detailing but allows for some neat tricks:
     You can buy HO scale trees and split off branches to be whole trees in Z.
     The trains are so light you can cut up styrofoam and foam core art board for track support.
     And you can print out great looking brick and stone walls on a computer, adjusted to your needs.
My major construction materials were foam core art board, styrofoam, Peco Z guage track, ultra
thin scale wood strips (for bridges and trestle), sandpaper (for gravel), Card Stock (heavy paper --
for tunnel portals), Liquitex Acrylic Paints (Green for vegitation and various browns for "mud")
and onion skin tracing paper (for bare rock).
    

The first step after assembling
the materials was to arrange the
track and mark its location on
the foam board. This drawing is
not to scale but shows the locations of trestle, tunnels
and the burried siding end.

 This shows basic construction.
The bottom foam board was left
whole as a lightweight layout
base. Then I cut a second foam
board about 3x the track width
for the bed. You can see that
I use the paint for glue.		 This shows the results of
the printed masonry and
the paper rocks. This
portal is nearly hidden at
the back of the layout
    
These pictures show the trestle and other wood items. These are the only things I used transparent
wood glue on, for obvious reasons. After tracing the dimensions on glossy paper, I first glued the
cross planks together, then attached the horizontal beams to their bottom, and finally assembled
the rest in place. More of the scale planks made up the old-style wagon crossing. The stream is still
just a bed -- I haven't figured out how to make good looking Z water. But note the lamp pole just in
front of the station. I ran the wiring in a groove cut in the bottom plate over to the back area (the
second photo above.
    

A closer view of the station. When I built this layout, the only affordable buildings were the Marklin blocks of cast rubbery plastic. I couldn't put lights in them, but I did manage to paint the windows, doors, roofs and chimneys. This view, in addition to a clear look at my one turnout, shows the microswitches I installed to control it. Again the wires are grooved in to the bottom of the table. I was planning to build my own super throttle control. This is the blind canyon that the spur line runs into.there's another painted building from Marklin with another lamp post. Note also the man-sized mine entrance and the barely visible sluice used to supply "water" to the factory.
    

Not much to say about the farm house. It's another Marklin. I tried to show the walkway and flower gardens, but couldn't bet them to show up. No lamp posts here, but note the wood bridge across the stream. The garden was easy. You just paint the ground "dirt" then when it dries paint a line of dirt and sprinkle plants in it. The shed and a picnic table had to bebuilt from scrap "lumber". A mountain sits here unless a train gets stuck. To reduce that I put in a custom re-railer.

This is the finished end of my layout. It has been several years since I did much with it besides
vacuuming it for these photos. Not all the dust came up so much of the plant life looks grey. If
anyone is interested all my rolling stock is functional and visible in these pictures, although the
boxcars often have trouble on the trestle twist.
     Some additional construction notes may be in order: 1) In laying grass I paint the area,
sprinkle the finest grass powder I can find in the wet paint and vacuum up the excess when it's dry.
I use green for lush areas, burnt sienna for scrub, streams and gardens,and raw sienna or ocher for
dry or sandy areas. Trees and bushes are painted down first and then the grass. 2)Gravel is done
by cutting fine grade sandpaper, painting that down, then painting grass, flowers or weeds around it,
being sure to cover the edges. I'll also do mud, but have to be careful not to get the paint on the
surface of the paper -- that looks wierd. 3)I usually use green paint for flowers to suggest stems.
4) My mountains are prettu sneaky. I actually discovered the technique by accident. I spilled some
paint on tracing paper and crumpled it up to throw away. Then I noticed how it looked -- almost like
rock. I experimented a bit and found that onion skin worked best. White or tan both work well in
that. But regular tracing paper is too white. The paint color doesn't show through enough. I usually
use an umber (darker) or burnt sienna (lighter), but any brown should do OK. In fact, I used Sienna
to the right and umber to the left to indicate a difference in rock tables and a possible reason for
the valley. The edges are torn, not cut, and paint applied carefylly to the back side of one sheet
to be applied to the next. In the unlikely event of paint squeezing out of the crack you have to
clean it off quickly. 5) I also placed my main tunnel entrances on OUTwardly turning curves to
suggest the line might come from down the valley and go on up. 6) As with everything else I painted
down my track everywhere except on the trestle and micro bridges. This allowed me to sprinkle
ultra fine scall ballast between and around the rails. Sandpaper would not have worked, between the
difficulty of joining it seamlessly (the ends would show where one piece met the next) and the
pre-built track visibly sitting on top of it. The excess ballast was also vacuumed up.

Rolling Stock is a whole other story.