New, not necessarily exciting
November 30, 2009 - This web site has moved from a machine in my basement to a hosting service. A lot of script based pages don't work rproperly.
June 14, 2007 - Added stills of the 0831 factory-built layout.
June 14, 2007 - Added video of the 0831 factory-built layout.
June 7, 2007 - Added catalog pictures of Märklin factory-built layouts for store window displays. Most are scans from sad looking xeroxes.
May 16, 2007 - Added the little videos I made to sell loks on eBay.
February 24, 2007 - Added updates to Billy's Layout in Progress.
February 1, 2006 - Made the eras link point to Märklin's page.
January 29, 2006 - Some snapshots of layouts from the Z Club 92 Museum.
January 28, 2006 - I made a couple fun videos while I work on the boring ones.
January 17, 2006 - added a blurb about dealing with locomotives that don't run because the oil is hardened.
January 14, 2006 - added some snapshots of my old layouts to the operations page.
January 13, 2006 - added covers, listings and PDFs of the 1972 Shop windows display, 1975 New Items and 1980 New Items catalogs on the catalogs page.
January 11, 2006 - Posted a page about setting up your first Märklin starter set. Suggestions for improvement are wlecome.
December 30, 2005 - Added a table about Eras provided by Bob S.
December 7, 2005 - Replaced the "List of rolling stock scans" with the "List of models photographed" which uses a new version of the Item Finder, having a "summary" check to produce a "list" rather than a "catalog". Most importantly it shows the 2005 picture series rather than the old ones. Also made the search case insensitive by default. At this point if I don't have a picture of it I probably don't have it to take a picture of. Photo contributions for things I don't have, in the same format are welcome. I can mask the background from pictures you send. If you want to send me an item to photograph, I'll take care of insured postage both ways.
October 30, 2005 - Am making vast progress with content in the Item Finder. Try ".*". Updated the intro page.
September 23, 2005 - I had the identification of the plastic wheel types backwards on the variations page. That's fixed now.
August 21, 2005 - I ditched the forums and mailing lists.
June 24, 2005 - I've made a little page with pictures describing common variations found in the same model produced over time. I've also been hard at work adding new pictures (mostly retaking old pictures). The new pictures can be found when you use the Item Finder. Try entering ^861.$ or ^[01]...$ - these mean show models with four digits beginning with 861 and show models with four digits beginning with either 0 or 1. Eventually when everything is (re)photographed I'll change over all the various lookup mechanisms to use the new pictures.
May 22, 2005 - I've been doing a lot of work on the catalogs page, particulary listing the Z items so you can search for which catalogs things were in. I put up an Item Finder page that interprets your search string as a regular expression. This doesn't seem too common in webland but if you know what regular expressions are you might appreciate it. Now it's a matter of cleaning and augmenting the database it uses.
April 8, 2005 - PDFs of a couple New Items brochures on the catalogs page. Many more Price Lists including 2003 Dealer Net Prices. Pictures of the Gold 8800 and Gold Crocodile.
April 2, 2005 - Added a bunch of cover thumbnails to the catalogs page.
March 25, 2005 - Posted a PDF of the April 15, 1994 Item Master price list. A pretty amazing document which appears to list everything including dealer-only items such promotional items including layouts and parts. This is the first master list I've come across.
Also started a page of catalogs in PDF which so far has just the 1980 Z catalog and the amazing Modellbahn Freunde LIC catalog.
March 16, 2005 - Added a copy of the operations page in a new location and an entry for RailModeller Stuff that contains links to download enhanced Z Railsets for the program and wiring diagram for two trains operating in opposite directions.
March 1, 2005 - Added PDFs of (mostly) locomotive instruction sheets.
February 12, 2005 - Added the parts map and a side bar on the main page to locate it.
December 15, 2004 - Added a couple Mailing Lists since the Forums where such a resounding success.
December 4, 2004 - Added Discussion Forums. Fixed the '92 catalog searcher which must have been broken for years. Also fixed a typo in the introduction which has surely been there for nine years. Refreshed the Reciprocal Links page and added Do it Yourself in Z-Scale (which is probably the best Z site there is) to the (also updated) Manufacturers page.
October 22, 2003 - Moved the Z-World site to a machine in my home. Needed more disk storage then I could pay the ISP for. This will allow me to add the historical eBay Z prices I've been collecting for years (should I ever get around to it). Also removing mailto links to cut down on the spam. And I'll be modernizing the site.