The station that my layout has take inspiration from is visited by a number of EuroCity trains. The ones going to Switzerland can be easily modelled using Marklin’s 87662 set but that leaves the ECs going to Austria. The old Marklin 87342 set is about as rare as a unicorn (I saw one set sold on eBay for Euro 299), plus I wanted a rake in the latest colours. Therefore, I was going to have to scratch build or do a conversion. As I have never done something like this before, I thought it might be easier to convert existing coaches.

After comparing a number of photos of the prototype and Marklin models, I thought that 8740 could be converted into an Ampz with just a simple re-paint and 8758 could be converted into a representation of a Bmz by cutting two new windows into each carriage and a paint job.


8758 - the basis for a Bmz


8740 - the basis for the Ampz

The first step was just to pull the roofs off and then lever out the windows. A number of the crossbars on the windows of both coaches have to be scraped off with a scalpel. Then on the 8758.s you have to cut two new windows; one at each end of the carriage, next to the doors (about opposite the toilets’ windows on the other side). The plastic proved a bit tougher to cut through than I had expected and my finished openings were not great – they needed quite a bit of filing and a bit of filler to hide the worst bits. I then used some “Strip Magic” to get rid of all Marklin’s paint work. Next the destination boards had to be scraped flat. After all this hard work, the fun could begin. I first of all sprayed the bodies and roofs with a white undercoat. Once that had dried, I could start using masking tape to get ready for the main paint job.


An 8758 stripped and the two new windows cut - pretty rough at this stage

From what I could find on the web, the colours should be:
• grey NCS 2502 B (car body)
• grey NCS 4502 B (window band)
• grey 6502 B (skirts, bogies and front sides)
• traffic red RAL 3020 (roof and bottom stripe)

However, when looking at photos, there seems to be quite a bit of variation especially of the red used for the roof – it seems to vary from a glossy bright red to a matt salmon pink. In the end, I selected the following acrylic paints:
• roof – Revell gloss Ferrari red
• white strip – Tamiya flat white
• car body - mixed Tamiya flat white & sky grey (10:2)
• window band – mixed Tamiya sky grey & flat white (10:2)
• bottom stripe – mixed Tamiya flat red with a dash of yellow
• corridor doors – Tamiya flat red; kick plates – Tamiya flat aluminium
• skirts, bogies & front sides – mixed Tamiya dark grey with a bit of white
• window frames – matt black

I also toned down the centre of all the wheels with a dirty black/brown wash. I used a brush to apply the paint and I thinned everything down quite a lot, so every colour needed about three coats but at least I didn’t get any brush strokes! There was a bit of bleeding under the masking tape, forcing a bit of clean-up and I found that white line on the roof really hard to do. Anyway, once I was reasonably happy with the finish and all the paint had dried thoroughly, I re-assembled the coaches, filled any of the worst gaps (mainly at the end of the coaches where the roof joined the body) and did a final touch-up. Then I applied two thin coats of gloss varnish.

The decals came from http://www.modellbahndecals.de; if you send them a note when you order the decals, they will print them up for you in Z scale. But such small decals are really fiddly, and I think that I am really lucky that only one ended up in the dustbin. I tried out Humbrol decalfix to fix the decals to the coaches. It worked quite well; however, it does “melt” Tamiya acrylic paint, so it is important that you do varnish your paintwork before using decalfix otherwise you will have to do a re-paint. I let the decals dry overnight and then gave each coach another two thin coats of varnish to fix everything.

The result, well obviously not as good as a factory finished model and they don’t stand-up to close-up inspection. But from normal operating distances, I am happy enough with the outcome. Knowing my luck, Marklin will bring out a version next year!


The finished Ampz


The finished Bmz





Carim

Not bad at all!

This is Z gauge after all!