Who’s Who

• Robert Allbriton – Chairman (Monday Morning Quarterback)
• Hans Riddervold – President (The Guy Who Actually Gets Things Done)
• Rob Kluz – Owner of Ztrack: Lead Distributor for AZL and the Public Face of the Company (The only guy who actually does any work)

Who to contact to buy / repair / gossip / complain / compliment all AZL products:

Rob Kluz
Ztrack Magazine Ltd.
6142 Northcliff Blvd.
Dublin, OH 43016
www.ztrack.com
phone/fax (614) 764-1703

The Legend of AZL

AZL was founded as Norwegian Rail Miniatures (NRM) by Hans Riddervold many years ago. NRM made a line of fine brass narrow gauge Norwegian locomotives in scales larger than Z.

In his never ending quest for something more unique than Narrow Gauge Brass Norwegian Locomotives, Hans became interested in Z scale, and was involved with Don Bouchard at Rogue Locomotive Works in Medford, Oregon. Rogue was a “one stop shop” with in house tooling and injection molding. Rogue only made one complete product: the GP38-2. These were made by hand in very small batches and sold exclusively through Ztrack magazine. They also made the chassis for the GE C44-9W locomotives that would become the first AZL product.

Once Hans became intimately familiar with the heavy industrial tooling of Rogue, and the characters that operate said heavy industrial tooling, he realized that perhaps there was an easier way to do things. Due to Don Bouchard’s failing health and economics that would not support 2 -3 full time employees, Hans decided to outsource most of his production work. He called on his old friends at Ajin in Korea who had done work on his Norwegian models in years gone by. They agreed to build the shells for the GE C44-9W locomotives, and finally there was real modern locomotive power in Z scale! Better still, this gave Hans a reason to travel to Korea, mainly for the trains, but the Kimchi and “Liquid Refreshments” were added bonuses.

With the success of the first run, Hans contracted with Ajin to produce the PA1 and E8 locomotives – they were first displayed in St. Louis at the 2001 National Train Show.

This is where I come into the picture. I had built a bunch of Swiss Z-Bend Track modules for the National Train Show in 2001 and I was looking for someone to build some custom coaches in Swiss prototype that were unavailable. I had been talking to Harald Frudenreich at FR about the project when Rob Kluz introduced me to Hans Riddervold at NTS 2001 in St. Louis. Hans and I got along quite well from the beginning and after a dinner, and probably more drinks than I should have had, I offered that if he ever wanted to do a joint project together, I was up for it.

Hans then introduced me to Ajin and he offered to help shepherd my Swiss project through their process, thus Swiss Z line (SZL) was born with the Re 4/4 II locomotive and EW-I commuter coaches.

Hans and I also agreed to do the Southern Pacific GS3 and GS4 Daylight project together as a 50/50 joint venture. It was shortly thereafter that Hans did the last solo AZL project with Ajin: the SD40-2 line.

On 10 June 2005, Hans and I agreed to become 50/50 partners in Rail Miniatures, AS – the new parent company of AZL and SZL. We decided to launch into injection molded Z scale products to offer lower prices and higher quality. From this came the F59PHi, SD70/75 and GP7 projects, as well as our new freight car line, and Swiss Brass Re 6/6 locomotives.

With this partnership, good times are ahead for Z scalers around the world as we are constantly looking at new and exciting projects for Z!