It was a bit difficult to find Z gauge buses, so made them. The basic plastic is 0.75mm styrene sheet. The Mercedes bus has a more square body so was easier to build using the basic straight surfaces. The A pillars were a bit thin so I had to be careful not to break them, which I did on two buses.

The bendy bus and double decker were actually a bit easier to make as there was a bit more stronger areas holding the buses together. The concertina in the bendy bus was layers of 0.4mm strips with spacers, then spacers cut off later. Masked to paint dark grey, after the red colour. It is actually hollow inside the bus so one can "walk" through.

I put 37kW air conditioning units on the buses as in general one is looking down on the roofs, using some offcuts of stainless steel balustrade. Also emergency exit hatches. Wheels are a few styrene tubes running the width of the body, something to glue down, to create rims and tyres. Also sanded a whisker off the bottom of the tyres so the tyres look better on the road.

There are small strips inside to locate the glazing. Glazing was some spare polarising filter gel/film 0.5mm plastic sheet from Bhphoto in New York. I made sure all the polarising film was horizontal orientation so if you are wearing polarising sun glasses the glazing doesn't go black with two right angle filters. Window frames are just a scored line.

I didn't detail the inside of the buses, after about a day and a half per bus I had had enough and the glazing is dark enough to hide the interior to a good enough degree, but still showing lightness so the bus doesn't look like a solid lump of plastic. The double decker, painted the green first then masked off to paint black. Paint is 150ml powder touch up cans, same a car touch up spray cans. Not ideal but I'm happy with it. Probably should have sanded the styrene with a few finer grades of sand paper. I use Norton waterproof paper as it is better quality.







(Everything on wrong side of the road for photo. Road has camber, about 1mm higher in the centre. Road sign panel 12.5 x 8mm etched stainless steel)

It is difficult getting down to this size. I need to stick on the high level brake light. After building my vehicles I realised just how poor the bought ones are. Windows on every car don't line up, flash from mould, rough on the side where the body is cut off and no mirrors. Also all over scale. In the meantime I have stuck windscreen wipers on the van and Deutsche Post logo on the sides.

The black strip is a piece of Evergreen stripstyrene #100 0.25mm x 0.5mm cut in half. At a normal viewing distance in the scenery, and more to the point without my glasses, this sort of detail is not noticeable. I could paint it on with a Windsor Newton 000 brush.

A Mercedes Econic waste management truck. It was relatively easy to build, but still about a day's work. Overall length is 42mm. I seemed to knock off a mirror and one orange lights down the side. One can see more imperfections in the photo than the actual model.





Still need to do landscaping around the houses.



Preparing to put on the summer wheels. The spokes were fiddly, 0.25 x 1.5mm styrene cut into short strips. Then a thin cap stuck on top. Styrene tube ID is 3.2mm. Still have to put the logo on the rims.

Started a Unimog U216 production line. Have a few model variation ideas. First one with road side grass cutter. It started as one cutter, then I got a bit carried away with second cutter..... triple?
The rear cutting arm does swivel, but this is simply to make painting easier so I don't have to mask for all the different colours. The cabin needs finishing off plus other details so it's road worthy!

I will do some more photos tomorrow with better lighting. The other vehicle in the previous spray painting parts photo is a Schmidt Swingo 200. Then I have to get back on to the remaining Unimogs, still have 16 tyres to tread! Some of the other Unimogs I have the twin slit grill, I wasn't game on the first one.


(Just noticed one of the safety lights knocked over)

Can now groom the snow with rotary plough, snow flap adjuster and shield installed. The front plough is a bit undersize, if I'm in the mood I'll upgrade it. I did install dashboard and seats in the cabin, mainly just to cut back the red paint inside from spraying.








The stainless steel balustrade for the tracks, there are two layers, the inside layer is black. Only with the outer layer the track looked a bit thin.

(have to vacuum the trees a bit more thoroughly!)

Sprayed the blue on the petrol station facia, and did a quick scene set up with the new vehicles. Drilled a 0.75mm hole with a pin vise in the bottom of each of the awning columns to pin the awning to the road with offcuts of paperclips so it won't fall over, and so I can remove it to do further detail and position cars more easily.







Shot at 16mm f16, sharpened luminosity channel in LAB colour space (can also be done to a copied layer set to luminosity in RGB, but sometimes I want to blur A and B channels a few pixels to reduce colour artefacts, good if you are trying to fix a jpg) a20/r30/t0 to increase local contrast by sharpening, doubled image size, sharpened luminosity channel a200/r1.4/t0, halved image size (sharpening a doubled size is better than sharpening half the amount at the original size). Then the 3 sized images cropped and scaled to required size and sharpened a50/r0.3/t0.

Finally pulling the finger out for my 4 remaining Unimogs, 90% complete for far too long.


Embarrassing, eating too many prawn cutlets & asking for a chili sauce requiring containers for "chili sauce"... nevertheless the containers are useful!


The only really difficult issue rather than asking for a halve dozen prawns or 2 x half dozen!... was the last colour. It was yellow, red or orange. In the end went for orange which could be used as a secondary/backup vehicle in a sub scene.

Blue, turquoise (from Eckersley's, cost a fortune, but that's how it is) & lime Green (within reason from Holts 150g touch-up cans) were Unimog colours I found on actual vehicle colours.

I hadn't actually planned to make a Unimog snowplough (English spelling), but after seeing some pretty ordinary 3D printed Z gauge models, thought I would see if I could do a touch better by hand.










I should have removed the rear section of the vertical tray, but then it would have been more painting, so I just raised the stone spreader a bit higher, I can live with that at 1:220 scale. The actual plough is a compound curve made from 2 Evergreen diameter tubes. The stainless behind the plough is some repurposed stainless just to look busy.

Still will add windscreen wipers & a few other minor details.

The safety grate on the hopper was some repurposed stainless steel etching (one can just see the etching undercut due to photo etching from both sides. 0.25mm alignment is pushing etching on 0.3mm stainless steel to the limit) gaps are bit too large, but the most suitable repurposing of etchings I had, It's ok for this situation.


I have a pile of Trafofuchs Z gauge figures yet to stick on the layout, a few skiers. Unless you want to torture yourself with a 000 size Winsor Newton series 7 brush, just buy the figures. There are on par with the Preiser figures.

The etched stainless behind the plough, is a 2mm square grid for a building lattice. I bent it over & snipped out the end for top & bottom (first) for plough. Only glued at the bottom. Was going to drill & key it in, but it was too fiddly. There is also a triangle piece as well which was part of a pontoon access ramp.

I did all the artwork in Adobe Illustrator, it's a lot of work setting it up, but quite satisfying. Morris Graphics, Mortdale NSW did the etching, sheet is about 300 x 500mm. Costs a lot of money so you cram in as much as possible & think what you may need in the future. The fold up seats I poked in every available corner.

I like stainless because if you don't get a bend just right you have a second chance, brass you don't. Also paint sticks really well. Often buildings simply need stainless balustrade etc, so no painting.

You do get cut, but not the nasty cuts from brass which take longer to heel.