[This is the original story (with minor corrections), as printed in Ztrack Magazine, Number 9, December 1990, just after adding the Transfer Table and engine houses but before major expansion of the balance of the facilities of the Berlinerwerke-Z, especially the addition of the turntable and roundhouse.]

[Layout Diagram which accompanied 1990 article]

A Brief History

The rationale of the Berlinerwerke is to justify fitting the Horseshoe Curve onto one end if it, connecting Pittsburgh and the Allegheny tunnels with Sunnyside yard, the LIRR, and the great railroad bridge across Long Island Sound between Greenport and Rhode Island.

The BW plant includes a major museum and restoration shop, so anything can run on the BW without restrictions.  There is an excursion RR and a heavy-equipment moving group with gigantic engines (DDP-45 and worse), enormous drop-center flatcars, a Schnable car and others going up to an 880-ton monster with 38 axles, scaling out at one meter in length in HO.  That would be 15" in Z!  All this runs some pretty strange rolling stock.  There are a number of steam engine houses, a dynamometer shop, a large turntable and roundhouse, and a huge 6-track diesel shop and 8-track transfer table all on the basic tabletop.

The Z-scale BW sits on a 2 x 4 foot sheet of Homasote, framed with an integral 6" shelf up front for two tiny AutoPulse "TRoller" powerpacks and far too many switches and controls, including that for the transfer table.  The maximum height, without structures, is only 2 " (the transfer table operator's shack has to come off for that).  It was designed to fit in the trunk of a car I no longer have!  There are ten regular turnouts, one curved turnout, one double-slip switch, a reversing loop, twelve blocks, three uncoupling ramps, as well as two single-track steam engine houses, three double-track diesel shops, and two small bridges.  All buildings, even the engine houses with their power-operated doors, are demountable.

To date, there is no scenery whatsoever {but the BW-Z is so crammed with stuff that nobody seems to notice!}.

(Not all of the foregoing came to pass or was valid later,
but for more detailed information about the HO Berlinerwerke,
visit the Horseshoe Curve/Berlinerwerke Saga page.)

As of the current writing, with the roundhouse and turntable "squoze" inside the reversing loop, we're up to 13 regular turnouts, 2 curved turnouts, about 24 blocks, and are working up a bunch of uncoupling ramps for Micro-Trains Magnematics.  The new "North" yard will add 2 more turnouts and 3 more double slip switches.  Shoehorning a runaround for the container terminal will add 2 more curved tunouts, which will have too be heavily modified and add operating interest because the clearances will be very much substandard!  At rough count, there are now 30 buildings or industrial complexes, all crammed into 2' x 4', but that will skyrocket when I (momentarily) add the 6" shelf at "North" for the yard and put storefronts all along the back ("Railroad Avenue").

I almost did the BW-Z in on 16 Feb 03; I probably shouldn't even admit I pulled this caper!  I was carring a bowl of very-hot, canned chicken and rice soup, loaded with okra and gelatin and who knows what other thickeners and was carrying it in the same room as the BW-Z when I twisted my ankle slightly and went careening across the room with the soup slopping slightly into the serving plate under the bowl.  That greased the ways and the bowl started to go its own way, but the general trajectory of man and bowl was straight toward the BW-Z!  Contorting myself in a manner worthy of the great Mikhail Baryshnikov, I teetered sideways just enough that I was able to set the plate and bowl down on top of the left-hand controller, which has a relatively horizontal surface, before I twisted out of the way and missed colliding with the layout, but NOT before about a cupful of hot, slimy soup and vegetables and such slopped onto the controller and the adjoining electrical switches and over the front left edge of the framing onto the space where the Restinghouse plant would have been!  Of course, the soup ran down between the Homasote and the framing, where nothing short of a fire axe could have reached it!  A mad dash for paper towels took care of most of the liquid, which, oddly enough, only reached to the outer track and did not splash onto it or seep under, but soup and rice got between the controller and the framing and the switch panel; some frantic screwdriver work pulled the controller loose and the panel up, and I ended up with only two switches to mop out (we'll see if they work in a day or two).  You haven't lived if you've never disconected a power pack and taken it to the bathroom to sponge it off!  The layout is down for rewiring, so there were no buildings in place and the only cars nearby were just outside the trajectory of splashing soup; one of my hermaphrodite-couplered M-T flats got a tiny speck on the deck, where it wiped off quite easily, but my FR Husky stack car, although knocked wildly away just in time, came off clean and without a scratch, as did a Märklin caboose.  18 hours later, the Homasote, while stained lightly, is dry and there doesn't seem to be any trace of odor.  Time to start reassembling things!  MR is right; model railroading IS fun with everlasting challenge!   (17 Feb 03)

I probably should add here that I actually started the Berlinerwerke-Z on 27 December 1980 with a Märklin 8907A starter set at a whopping $99.50 from Charles Schaeffer at The Caboose in Huntington, Long Island.  I gave him back that awful 6727 power pack but bought so much track and so many accessories that my original bill came to $344.90 before tax!  I just (13 Dec 97) found my original layout sketches and worksheets dated 26 Dec 80 and updated on the 27th!

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For tall tales of the BW and its equipment and such, visit the Berlinerwerke Apocrypha page.