Inspired by the HO double decker coach manufactured by a former Eastern German company, I thought, the way they use the simple paper construction to imitate the diaphragm is indeed not a bad idea to adopt to the Z coaches, simple and inexpensive. All you need is paper, a sharp model knife and patience.

Well, pictures worth a million of words, let's take a look at the pictures :

Picture Nr.1 basically shows the construction of the HO diaphragm. Assembled by 2 sections; one folded from the top to the bottom and the other from left to right. The 2 parts were assembled alternately.

The 1:220 diaphragm is exactly like the 1:87 except in scale. Measure the end of the coach to get an appropriate size and shape of the diaphragm and also measure the distance between the coaches to determine how many folds you should make; too many folds will make the coaches unable to negotiates the tight curved track, on the other hand, insufficient folds does not look real.

Here I use the Westmodel "ETA 177" (Picture Nr.2) as an example to show how the diaphragm works:

Picture Nr.3 shows the double sides tape being applied onto the paper diaphragm and put onto the coaches. The reason for the use of the double sides tape is because you can always remove the diaphragm without damaging the train.

Picture Nr.4 shows how it looks after adding the diaphragm. The "ETA 177" has been test run after the modification and did not show any problem even on my small layout.

I have also tried the diaphragm on the Marklin "TEE" VT11.5. The real "TEE" does not use the same type of diaphragm, but if you are comfortable with the difference of the look between the real "TEE" and the modified Z, the paper diaphragm actually works on the "TEE" very well and the train set does look much better. One advice is that you have to remember to cut an opening in the middle of each set of the diaphragm to let the couplers go through.

(Special thanks to Mr. Yung and Mr. Yeung of Concord Hobbies for lending me the HO paper diaphragm for my experiment)

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