GHQ Models Forums

Everyone,

OK so I have everything I think I need to simulate terrain in either eastern or western Europe. I can scratch build quite a bit but one thing I think, or just admit I have no idea how to do, is build tracks. The rail system during WW2 was extremely important and I would like to show that in both my terrain and my games. Does anyone have any knowledge as to where or if scale tracks for this exist? (I apologize if this was beat to death in a previous post but my searches yielded no fruit).

Gunbunny

Gunbunny,

This may help out some:

http://www.ghqmodels.com/forum/viewtopi ... c&start=15

Paul

av8rmongo,

Any possibility that you could post a picture of those tracks with a Tank/afv next to it, I'm somewhat unfamiliar with z scale and sometimes a picture could tell a thousand specs (or if my gaming will deal with the discrepancy!).

Are you still making them?


Gunbunny

In a eastern front game we played before Christmas,I scaned N scale Kato track which i shurnk 50% when printing,
It looked pretty good but there was a lack of depth, From the right angle it looked good.
But you got the idea and it looked way better than a gaint rail line.
I will try and post a picture.

Mike

Gunbunny,

Here are a few pics of tanks next to Z scale track...works for me.

I believe Z scale is 1/220 so its a little larger than 1/285...


and

and


hope this helps.

sfcgreg29er wrote: Here are a few pics of tanks next to Z scale track...works for me.

Wow, Mike. That's some great looking stuff there! Love the buildings, and the basing of the buildings, and the trees, and the road. And let's not fail to give a shout-out on the tanks!

Oh yeah, the tracks look good too. Size looks good to me. Like to see 'em with a locomotive or train car on them, though. But that's just 'cause I can always look at more pictures...

A supplier of 1/285 rails in resin is I-94 Enterprises from Colorado. Uo to 2007 they wee sold by Vac-Cast. They have many other models in this scale.

The only proìblems I found with the rails is the thickness of the base and the length of the sections of 10cm only.

Another source of rails I know is a Polish Company called "Wargamer". They sell on ebay too.

In any case it is mainly a question of visual effect. The Z-scale rails may be a good substitute but they are really too big. Consoder that the most commn railway gauge is 1435mm (measured inside the rails), this means that the average medium tank should stay with the rails inside its tracks.

TAMMY wrote:A supplier of 1/285 rails in resin is I-94 Enterprises from Colorado.

I-94 enterprises is in Hastings, Michigan I believe.

TAMMY wrote:The only proìblems I found with the rails is the thickness of the base and the length of the sections of 10cm only.

True the length can be a problem. Even the ones I have cast myself from z-scale model train track are about 10cm in length. Rubber cementing the pieces together keeps them reasonably together on the table and makes for very easy separation and clean-up at the end of the game. As for the thickness of the base, a few seconds on a belt sander will sand it down to whatever thickness seems appropriate to you. I have even experimented with sanding one side more to produce a gradiant to conform with slightly rising or falling terrain. I've never seen the track products from I-94 but their prices are reasonable based on what I know it costs me to make my track and giving them a little profit margin for them and for Vac-U-Cast.

TAMMY wrote: In any case it is mainly a question of visual effect. The Z-scale rails may be a good substitute but they are really too big. Consoder that the most commn railway gauge is 1435mm (measured inside the rails), this means that the average medium tank should stay with the rails inside its tracks.

True again. But consider this. Our hosts here market 7mm or maybe 8mm soldiers to game alongside their 6mm scaled vehicles and buildings. There is not a single commercially published ruleset that I'm aware of that uses 1:1 ground scale. There are compromises made everywhere in our hobby. 1/220 does not equal 1/285 but it can be an alternative, especially if they are intended to be a terrain feature to liven up a game table more than say using them for armored trains.

I use a pack of Hornby (?) quarter-scale track planner, which works out at about 1/300th.

It costs about 5-quid, is plastic, has about 10ft of track in various lengths of straights and curves, and paints up well.

A picture showing the track (in brown) joined up to a resin train station is here :

Vehicles are GHQ.

av8rmongo

you are right for Michigan. I had mixed the address of Vac-U-Cast (of which I have the rails) with that of its new owner. I-94 bought it in 2010 together with Les Batiments of Nafzuger.

For the rest I fully agree on use of Z scale rails as a terrain feature. This is what I meant with "visual effect" and, after all, they are easier to use then the resin one. They do not need to be painted.

Z scale is as good as its going to get. If you do Russian rails they are a wider gauge than western rails so are less out of scale.
I glued mine to terrain boards and grassed them. Armored trains look interesting but I would advise against playing a game with them as they are quite unwieldy.

Mobius

I find your layout very effective with the railway blending well in the landscape. As i said you can tell the difference only if you move a tank following the tracks.

In any case the Russian auge is wider that tne Western European but not so much. It is 1520mm against 1435mm (or 4 ft 11 5/6 in against 4 ft 8 1/2 in). That is about 6% more and not 30% as the difference in scale.

Moreover your consideration is valid only for Russian trains as the Germans narrowed the tracks (as far as I have understood they simply repositioned one of the rails) in order to use their locomotives. This caused a few problems as the existing railway supply points (water and coals) were too distant for the smaller German locomotives as they were sized on the bigger Russian machines which had more range.

In other words your consideraton is valid for the years in which the Germans were advancing not when they were retreating.

Leva miniatures used to make very good examples of them for 6mm - I am not sure whether they retained the rights to those or have stock left over.

I have the old Vac u cast resin tracks and they are very nice. They seem to fit my H&R Polish armoured train quite well.

Here's a couple of pictures. I glued my railway tracks to some cardboard (there's 2 on each length) to help protect them from damage so they have quite large embankments now.






Cheers
Kieran

Fun fact, some vacu cast rails are on ebay now (not mine).