Odd question

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Hi all

Havent posted in a while. Been busy with numerous projects and family life. Finally started planning and a little building on a layout. Anyway I had a crazy idea the other day of building and HO scale city park for the layout, complete with one of those cool park trains that you see at many parks. My question is simple, what scale should I use for this? I was thinking Z scale. Am i right? If so are there any companies out there that carry a decent line of Z scale passenger trains?

2

Z would be fine but that stuff is really expensive in my opinion.

3

I’ve seen a couple of nice HO modules that have “ride” set up using z. They look pretty good. One fellow cut the tops off a couple of box cars and glued HO seated people in.

4

Depends on your main scale.

The serious ride-on park trains (not the local live steam club) are typically between 15 and 30 inch gauge. If you model in HO, then N or Z would work. An O-scaler could go with HO or N, but Z would be appropriate if the live steamers were out.

To model a real park train, you would have to modify the small-scale cars to seat main-scale people, and pick models that can turn street corners.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

5

http://www.ztrack.com/AZL/amerzlines.html

This company has a good line of passenger cars. Marklin is another. Here’s a whole list of Z scale manufacturers.
http://americanzscale.org/list.asp?t=1

(ain’t gonna be cheap!)

6

Thanks for the advice everyone

7

I’ve been wanting to do the same thin on my HO layout. Z scale looks like the way to go. I was thinking about gondolas with benches in them for the ho scale people to sit on.

Maybe one of these days…

Rotor

8

I’ve always been fascinated by this idea (even though I’m in N). In Greenville (where my aunt and grandma live) there’s a little train like what your describing. His name is George ([%-)]) and I’m willing to bet he’s a model of an F unit (IDK what type of F unit). His track is sorta like this (3/4 of a mile). It was a half-mile oval, then they added that little oval down in the lower left. I made this quick in Paint, so it’s not to scale. He’s also painted like a Southern F unit: