1st Town Builder Kit Progress Shots

[tom mann]

Thought I would post some progress shots of the first Town Builder release.  Quality of the castings is very nice.

[Scottl]

That's an understatement, they look amazing to me.  I like the capping stone that is cast in, along with so many other details.

[DKS]

Tom, thanks for posting this. I've been hoping someone would show their build progress. Very much looking forward to more.

[Chris333]

Mine is still in kit form while I work on the layout. But yes the castings are very well detailed, even better than DPM in N scale.


Idea!!!  Resin cast freight cars? Send them to Bowser for pad printing? Just go to Atlas steam era classics and pick a design.

[Catt]

Does not take much to be better than DPM in N scale anymore.Woodland Scenics should contract David to do their mold work,cause DPM didn't look that good when it was new.

David should have Karin post that pic on Stonebridge and Z Central to show how good it looks in the raw.

(Disclaimer- DKS did not bribe me to post this  )

[Zcratchman]

Tom, your photography looks great; however without something to judge the fine detail against, this looks good enough to be any scale.  What would really show off David's and Karin's work is if you put a dime in the photo with the build.

And by the way folks, when have we NOT seen any of David Smith's endeavors look superior.  Or Karin’s for that matter?  Now take two of the most talented people in Z scale and put them together and what would you expect?

Joe

[tom mann]

The first few layers of brick and mortar weathering:



I found that using paint for mortar (as indicated in the directions) did not sufficiently fill up the deep spaces between the bricks (I instead used joint compound with Polly Scale Tarnished black mixed in).  The nice thing about this is you can partially fill up the space, so it looks like the mortar has deteriorated (around the left window).



And this is excessive, but looks cool at 1:1 :

[pwnj]

Unbelievable. 

[Alaska Railroader]

Tom, you are doing an incredible job! Its quite satisfying to see you work on this building. Hope we get a chance to see what you do with #2!
Karin

[Sokramiketes]

So, a brick question since I was recently playing with brick hatches in AutoCad.  I was hatching some station walls with brick in AutoCad but the "Brick" hatch looked funny to my eye because the bricks were (proportional to height) shorter in length than I'm used to seeing.  I noticed you guys chose this pattern for the first release.  Are you matching an existing building that had these shorter bricks?

I ended up going with "AR-BRSTD" as seen on the left here:



The right side is the "Brick" hatch with the shorter bricks like this building.  It reminds me more of cinder block proportions, but I'm guessing there's all sorts of brick out there.

[DKS]

The brick size we used is not based on any real brick type. It was chosen more out of convenience for mastering. As we progress with newer kits, we'll be tweaking the brick style as we go.

[pwnj]

Amazing.  Incredible detail, and great paint/weathering.

[rswinnerton]

[tom mann]

with #2!

According to this site: http://nztproducts.blogspot.com/, #2 will be announced tomorrow!

[Dave V]

According to this site: http://nztproducts.blogspot.com/, #2 will be announced tomorrow!

NZT is coming out with #2 in Z scale?  Ew, DKS thinks of EVERYTHING...!