New Jersey model train maker David Smith built this 1-35,200 scale train set. It's 1/8" x 1/4". It's part of a bigger delightfully recursive creation. From The Telegraph:
UPDATE: More details over at the homepage for The White River and Northern Model Railroad (Thanks, Jewels Vern!) And also video of the train over at Neatorama!
"World's smallest working model train set unveiled""I am creating a fictitious village called James River Branch and this model train is going to be placed inside the model shop I am building as part of the re-creation.
"It is going to be a model train village inside a model, so it is very postmodern"
Powered by a standard two-inch-long rotating motor head and carved out of mouldable plastic, the model train cost Mr Smith just over £6 to make.
UPDATE: More details over at the homepage for The White River and Northern Model Railroad (Thanks, Jewels Vern!) And also video of the train over at Neatorama!
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Seriously, I wish people would quit stealing my ideas before I've had a chance to think of them. So nice, I quit.
Home page with more examples:
http://whiteriverandnorthern.net/
1/35200 makes it a Z-gauge model of an n-gauge train set.
Not sure that's actually the right site. The link you posted goes to a site relating the somewhat sad tale of a man's dream of becoming a full-time model railroader dashed by his employer's decision to terminate its retirement program.
Or is it a N-gauge model of a Z-gauge train set?
Now he just needs a 1/35200 scale godzilla.
...And here I thought T-gauge was taking miniaturization a bit too far. Anyone up for a nanoscale version?
"It is going to be a model train village inside a model, so it is very postmodern"
Because that is the very definition of postmodernism....
Ha! When I saw the thumbnail on a British site I thought it was somebody with a bonsai tree stuck in their bum!
So if the soft plastic cylinder from which the train is cut goes around an oval track, does that mean the train changes size as it travels? Now THAT is post-modern.
Very clever simulation!
Even tough there is no credit on their page (they don't even link David Smith page!) I got the feeling that the Telegraph got some kind of "inspiration" from the one month old post about this micro train model on RETROTHING/HackaDay/Geek.com
http://www.retrothing.com/2009/09/the-worlds-smallest-model-railroad.html
looks like someone could use a manicure
At that scale, a 40 foot boxcar is approx .34mm long.
"It is going to be a model train village inside a model, so it is very postmodern"
I never said this. The author was being "creative" with his interpretation of what I said during the phone interview.
--David K. Smith
http://davidksmith.com/index.htm
It's really cute and very clever.
But it's not a model train.
There's a similarly recursive setup in the village of Godshill on the Isle of Wight:
http://www.modelvillagegodshill.co.uk/
It's a model of the village itself, which inevitably contains a model of the model, which contains etc. etc. If you stand facing the (original) village church you can track the sub-churches down through four or five levels in a straight line, though at a distance where you can take in the 1:1 church the smallest model is little more than a speck.