TBS Enters N Scale

TownBuilder System is pleased to announce our first planned N scale structure kit: Little Joe's Pizza. We selected this building based in part on feedback received from N scale modelers to the originbal Z scale kit (shown below).



Note that, given the larger size of N scale versus Z, we will be able to pack even more detail into this kit. Brickwork will be true to scale, windows will be finer, and many extras will be included. We hope you'll enjoy our first N scale kit, which is targeted for release in July.

The Big News from Denver

It may have seemed an odd venue to make such an important announcement, but it was all carefully planned. The National Z Scale Convention in Denver was the first major public modeling event since the coupler's patent was officially filed, which was the most critical point in the whole process, since it meant that "Patent Pending" could legally be applied to all promotional materials. Plus, I knew the news would migrate from Denver to N scalers on the Internet as fast as any form of data can travel.

And that's exactly what has happened. Surprisingly, the first outlet to pick it up was Model:160, what I consider to be an extremely selective group when it comes to the content they publish. In other words, I was as flattered as I was surprised. Mike Skibbie et al won't post just any old news; it must pass their stringent requirements for value and accuracy.



I'm only now announcing it myself on the NZT Company Blog because Denver was so hectic that I never stepped foot out of the Red Lion hotel the whole weekend. Add to this the fact that I finally arrived home well after midnight last night, and slept for twelve hours. I'm still probably as much vegetable as human, so there will be more information to come as I de-veg. Presently, there's a great thread on the Railwire where the coupler is being discussed in considerable detail. If you're not a member, I'd recommend joining the forum; yes, I'm admittedly a bit biased, but I consider it to be one of the best modeling forums on the Internet.

More importantly, joining the Railwire could create an opportunity for you to participate in a little bit of history. You see, I've announced the coupler project even before approaching a shop to do the tooling. Why? It will give me a chance to gather information on what features and capabilities will have the greatest impact on modelers. While the key functional parts (the patented bits) of the coupler are all done and locked up, other aspects of the coupler, such as the shank length, knuckle cosmetics, and many more attributes are not yet set in stone. This allows me to make a product that will satisfy as many customer needs and wants as is feasible. How often do manufacturers actually listen to their customers before developing a product?

Test Castings of NK-001

As I inch closer toward the completion of our first kit, commissioned by the New Jersey Museum of Transportation, I've pulled some test castings from the first set of molds, and I must admit the results are very encouraging. This will be an easy-to-assemble kit, yet it offers extraordinary detailing. I was literally counting bricks as I was creating the artwork for laser cutting. Here are some images of the first castings, to which I hastily applied a mortar effect: The double-hung windows are indeed double-hung, and even feature the locks seen on the prototype windows. After testing the drawings against the equipment that will be running on their N scale Pine Creek Railroad, the layout builders noted that the doors were too small for some of their (standard-gauge) equipment, so I created an alternate front wall with larger openings. These kits will be going on sale both at the museum shop at Alaire State Park and through NZT dealers; street date will likely be sometime early June.

Denver Diorama Finishing Touches

While the Denver Diorama was indeed completely done, a couple of small finishing touches yet remained. One was branding: I printed and applied two TownBuilder System logos (below), one to either side. In spite of having a "front," the diorama was designed for full 360-degree viewing, so two logos seemed appropriate.



The other finishing touch was my John Hancock (below). For what it's worth, it's very seldom that I'm inclined to sign something I've built. Who knows? It might actually be worth something someday. Incidentally, this view of the bottom shows the battery compartment.



Speaking of batteries, how is the lighting controlled? It so happens the switch is hiding in plain sight. I bonded a wad of clump foliage to the lever (highlighted below). Simply push the bush back and forth to turn the lights on and off.



How big is the diorama? At 6 x 16 inches, a better question would be, how small is it? A Railwire member asked to see the diorama together with some everyday objects to provide a better sense of scale. So, here it is posing with my eyeglasses and car keys. (This image expands when clicked.)



What's the the (fictional) town called? Oddly, I never bothered to give it a name. Perhaps the fortunate fellow who takes it home after the convention might be inclined to christen it. That's up to them; me, I'm just happy to see it finished!

Denver Diorama, Part 3

After completing the streets in Part 1 and the kits in Part 2, it was time to wrap up the diorama with scenery and details. For the terrain I used Crayola Model Magic, a very strange modeling "clay" that's more like partially-dried-out silly putty—I suspect they're actually closely related, based on Model Magic's similarity to stale marshmallows. The choice was driven by the constraints of the project: I needed to use the cleanest possible material, and one that I could control with absolute precision. Model Magic fit the bill.

I began by rolling the material out into sheets between 1/8- and 1/4-inch thick, which I broke into workable chunks and pressed into place on the base. Then I teased and prodded the material into the precise shape I sought. Most of this was done with a small screwdriver (below), but I used a number of other tools including my fingers. The material does a surprisingly good job of adhering to the Gatorfoam base, it "dries" (just gets slightly stiffer, really) in about 24 hours, and takes paints and stains of all sorts very well.



The most fun I had was detailing the area behind Plain Jane's shop: originally I was going to create a scene where the sidewalk was being repaired, complete with forms around the sides and a gravel bed. However, when I carved out the "ashphalt" of the street in that area, I discovered underneath a bamboo skewer that I'd inserted into the Gatorfoam to give it strength across the wiring trench. The skewer looked for all the world like a water main, so I immediately shifted gears and created a new scene.

The most difficulty arose behind the bank, site of the drive-through. The slope of the terrain made it quite difficult to rig up a believable arrangement for the paving. Consequently, I entertained a number of alternate ideas, which included a building to replace the drive-through. First it was going to be a laundromat; then I thought about making part of a warehouse, with the end of a railroad siding behind it. These would be kitbashed from spare Plain Jane kit parts. I'd actually started making the front of the building, when I looked at the calendar and realized I was investing far too much time in an unplanned project.

Returning to Plan A, in desperation I cut a piece of black styrene to fit the space, dropped it in place, and realized it wasn't as bad as I'd feared at the outset; it only required some leveling of the terrain material (below). The problem I'd needlessly created for myself was trying to level the drive-through; by instead allowing it to follow the natural slope of the terrain, it looked perfectly fine, and was relatively easy to complete—I just had to sand the base of the island on an angle to match the slope, and voilà. A bit of curb separated the drive-through from the space behind the appliance store proper.



Meanwhile, I'd finished the remaining scenery by applying ground covers and installing trees around the townhouses. The abandoned five and dime property inspired a junk scene—always a hit with modelers—and I had plenty of goodies to populate it, including some reject test castings for details still under development, such as pole transformers.

The final stage of construction was detailing. I made parking meters by crushing the heads of small straight pins in a vice, and grinding the blobs to shape with a Dremel. The street signs are also homemade. While most of the commercial details are from NZT Products and Stonebridge Models, there are a couple from other sources, including a mailbox and a TV antenna (both of which will be available from NZT—someday).

Well, that's enough yammering about what I did; let's enjoy some nice big images of the finished product. Taken in natural sunlight (which nearly gave me a heart attack—the streets began to buckle in the sun), they all expand to 1200 x 650 pixels when clicked. The sky is not shopped in; it's a photo mounted on foam board.

























I'll confess it's going to be difficult for me to give up this diorama. Oh, did I mention that it's being raffled off at the convention? That's right, some lucky attendee will get to take this home with them! Hopefully it'll be someone who lives near other Z scalers, so it gets to be enjoyed by more than one individual.

At the end of the day, I must once again extend my deepest appreciation to Karin Snyder of Stonebridge Models. Without her extraordinary laser talents, bolstered by her willingness to go the extra mile and stretch her skills to the limit—literally doing the impossible by creating objects that other laser artists have said can't be done—none of this would exist. The TownBuilder System is not me, but is instead very much us.

Denver Diorama, Part 2

Part 1 of this little odyssey introduced the TownBuilder System diorama, which I'm making for the National Z Scale Convention in Denver next month. The base took about a day and a half to fabricate, although some of this time was spent working on the structures while things on the base dried. In this installment, I'll be presenting the work done on each of the six TBS kits being displayed. I'll describe build modifications and the finishing choices, as well as some of the blunders that happened along the way—if only to reinforce the fact that even a kit's designer has his share of brain farts (which should also nip any nitpicking in the bud).



Plain Jane's Thrift Shop. The first TownBuilder kit to be completed was the easiest—in fact, it was literally almost no work, because I used the test build. It's one of the few test builds I'd done that was 100% complete; often the production timeline is so compressed that I won't bother adding the roof or even finishing all of the walls. PJ's (as Karin and I lovingly refer to our first joint venture) only needed to have the LED installed.

The finishing work for PJ's is exactly as described in the instructions. In order to prepare it for the diorama, I installed the lighting, but with a variation: instead of installing the LED in the floor and attaching the floor to the bottom edges of the walls, I moved the floor up over the window displays. This created the effect of the apartments being illuminated, while leaving the store virtually dark, as though it closed each day before sundown.

One of two mistakes was that I'd not applied enough paint to the roof. It only received a light misting of black spray, and thus it glowed when the LED was lit. But I didn't discover this until after the building was permanently attached to the base, which precluded installing a light block under the roof. So, I applied a thick coat of black acrylic paint to the top of the whole roof. The other boo-boo was not putting a baffle between the LED and the windows. Consequently when the building is observed from certain angles, you see the LED directly, which hardly looks convincing—unless you pretend it's a space heater melting down.



Broad Street Bank. Once again I started with the test build, so there was no assembly work other than to add a roof it never had. I'd always felt the plain laserboard roof of the kit was, well, plain, so I applied a piece of painted sandpaper to give it a little more character. To improve the building's overall appearance, I did something I'd wanted to do since I designed the kit: I masked and sprayed the decorative architectural elements with a lighter grey. I chose an accent color not too far removed from the existing wall color, as I felt too much contrast would be garish.

To improve the appearance when lit, I fabricated an interior of sorts: I made a few false walls from scraps of laserboard, installed the kit's silhouette people, and then sprayed everything charcoal grey to make the effect more subtle. Alas, that last step was my big mistake: the grey is so dark that the interior isn't visible at all. Given a choice, however, this is better than being able to see into an empty box! One last mod was to install the LED under the roof, rather than in the floor; this allowed the light to shine down through the windows onto the ground outside, which is a realistic effect. The light also shines directly onto the street number etched into the window over the entrance—an unexpected bonus.



Jay Kay Appliances. For this kit—which remains my favorite—I started from scratch. Over the course of its two production runs, I've been tinkering with the wall color. It began a bit too saturated for my taste, and I'd since toned it down. To save construction time, I used the window display (a very fussy and time-consuming part to assemble) which I'd constructed to photograph for the instruction sheet. The only modification I made was to apply a piece of Duct tape to the roof to give it a more interesting texture. Oh, and I also added a TV antenna made by BAZ Models.

Much like the bank, JK's has architectural accents—strips of stone alternating with the brick. I'd wanted to highlight them all, but there are so many that it would have taken days to do all of the masking. So, I settled for just the big one across the window arches, plus the cornice, which I sprayed a light grey—once again to keep the contrast more subtle.

Blunders? Why yes, of course. My job of applying the decal to the awning was less than stellar, and the top and bottom edges got damaged. I tried touching it up with a fine-point Sharpie, but not all black dyes are created equally—the touchup work sticks out like a sore thumb.



Little Joe's Pizza. Owing to a few minor design changes just before going into production, I'd actually done two test-builds of Little Joe's. Although neither one was even close to being complete, it did save me a some time to start with the better-looking test build. I had to complete the roof, install windows on three out of the four walls, and assemble a new lighting fixture. For finishing, I pretty much followed the recommended procedure, using two shades of paint for the mortar to highlight the ghost building effect. I also masked and sprayed the cornice with dark brown.

The only modifications are inside. I wanted to create a more elaborate lighting effect, so I used two LEDs: a bluish one for the sign, and a warmer one to light the top floor apartments, leaving the middle floor dark to add interest. This was done by installing a laserboard floor in between the second and third floor windows. The effect works like a charm.

The big goof to look for is a badly warped wall. As I was installing the building permanently, I applied glue to the wall that butted up against JK's to tie them together, and then applied pressure on Little Joe's until the glue set. In the process, I caused the opposite wall—which would be mostly visible, naturally—to warp permanently. This is probably the most obvious blunder on the whole diorama, and there was nothing I could do about it short of tearing Little Joe's back out—and risk damaging JK's in the process. With time being in short supply, I had to live with it!



Winfield's Five and Dime. Because I wanted to change the way the main store windows were assembled, I built a new kit from scratch. After spraying the whole building with Krylon Suede, I assembled the windows using tinted plastic instead of the clear acetate that comes in the kit. But to save time, I decided to re-use the sign from the test build. Ultimately this led to a 180-degree turn in how I'd planned to finish the kit.

Originally I was going to do a straight build, complete with the kit-supplied interior. But as I cleaned up the sign to use again, I noticed a stain in the paint on one end which, to me, made the sign look as if it was old and neglected. Pop! Right then I decided to model the store as abandoned. I'd always wanted to make one of those long banner signs that hang in store windows proclaiming the property for sale or lease, so I quick rendered the art on my computer and printed out 1:220 signs for the former Winfield's. This in fact constitutes the only modification, since it did away with the need for any interior decoration.

I was starting to get really tired as work on this kit continued late into the evening, so the blunder list is too long to tally. The most glaring mistake is actually deliberate: in order to mitigate the effect of the warped pizzeria wall, I bowed the adjoining five and dime wall outward a little to fill in the space between them. This left a gap in the five and dime roof along the wall, so I installed the air conditioning unit along that edge to detract from the gap. Did it work? You'll have to see for yourself at Denver.



East End Townhouses. The decision to build the diorama was made at the time this kit was being released, so when I did the test build, knowing it would also be used on the diorama, I took my time and went the extra mile to make it perfect. Thus the townhouse kit is a 100% stock build, with no mods at all. So, if you're one of the lucky ones to attend the convention, you'll get to see the same buildings that appear in the advertising and the packaging.

As far as mistakes go, the townhouses take the prize for second-biggest goof: I neglected to put opaque material behind the back doors, so when the diorama is lit, they glow in giddy colors. Nuclear doors notwithstanding, I'm most proud of how the townhouses came out.







Given the slope of the street, each building was carefully leveled with a digital level as it was installed on the diorama. It was a trial-and-error process wherein I added styrene shims under the corners of the building and sanded them down until the building sat level. This was complicated a bit by the fact that the "ground" sloped in two directions—lengthwise and across—so the backs of the buildings wound up standing on styrene stilts! But it's no big deal, since the area behind the buildings will be filled in with scenery material, a process to be detailed in the third and last installment.

Denver Diorama, Part 1

Since I won't be attending the National Z Scale Convention in Denver this coming May, I decided to send along a little something the attendees might want to check out: a TownBuilder System diorama. It will show all of the ZCS kits released to date in a single realistically-finished setting. Obviously the intent is to stimulate sales, but the larger purpose is simply something for the convention attendees to enjoy. I thought I'd document its construction so folks will know what went into it as well as to look for it.

First of all, I made very few and very minor kit modifications, the idea being to demonstrate what modelers can achieve without much effort. I'll describe exactly what I did to each one later; first I'll detail how I made the diorama base. You'll notice from the images that it's not flat, and the buildings aren't placed on it square. How come? Sloped streets are far more common in real life, and throwing everything on an angle adds more interest. It's also much more fun to build that way!

The diorama base began as two layers of half-inch Gatorfoam, cut from a few scraps I had lying around, and laminated together with spray cement. It could have been made with a single layer, but I gave it extra thickness to hide a battery pack. Yes, the diorama is fully illuminated! Since the kits come with LEDs, why not show them off?



The slope was created by sawing a third piece of foam board in half edgewise on an angle with a plain old wood crosscut saw. The two pieces were then glued back together with the parts flipped, so that the thick ends went together; this had the effect of increasing the slope. Then this wedge-shaped piece was laminated to the base. In the photo above, the wires seen sticking out come from the hidden battery pack, which is recessed in a compartment underneath.



Having sketched the arrangement of the streets (based on the placement of the buildings) on the surface with a pencil, I traced this onto a paper pattern which I taped to a sheet of thin black styrene, and cut it out to make the streets. After carving slots into the base for the wiring, I glued scraps of styrene onto the base to make crowns for the streets, then laminated everything together with spray cement (above).



I painted the streets with a mix of two spray paint colors, light grey and dark grey, which I sprayed on both at the same time vertically from a good height to achieve a relatively even mixture but with some natural-looking minor variations. Next, I added tar patches with a black Sharpie. Then I lightly brushed on some powdered chalk stains and streaks to finish the pavement, shown above.



I cut all of the sidewalks from a single piece of .030-inch thick white sheet styrene, scored it to simulate all of the sidewalk slabs as well as the curbs, and then distressed everything with sandpaper and a knife. After spraying it with a mix of light warm grey and off-white sprays, I then bonded the sidewalks to the streets with liquid plastic cement.

NOTE: In the photo above, the buildings are sitting beside the freshly-finished sidewalks. They're not installed, so they have not been made level. That will come later!



Since the buildings would be permanently attached to the base, the next thing I had to do was install all of the streetlights, because the wiring would run under the buildings. So, I drilled holes in the sidewalk to accept the lights, bonded them in place with CA, and wired them up for a quick test-lighting ceremony, as seen above.

The lights themselves are of the cheap bulk Chinese sort; however, they have LEDs, as opposed to the more prevalent ones that have grain-of-wheat bulbs. They actually look quite good, especially when fitted with bases, which I made from bits of .080-inch square strip styrene drilled endwise.



Finally, I turned my attention to lines for the streets. I made them from ordinary generic N scale decals, which I cut down to make stripes (above). This brought me to the point of being ready to install the buildings, which I'd begun working on in parallel with the base construction; I'll detail the work done on the six TBS kits in Part 2.