Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Being Articulate - sggrss 1

I really liked the articulated container wagons that were fairly common on the Gotthard intermodal trains, even though they might be a bit advanced for this junior-level Z scale modeler.



These are two-unit container flat wagons that pivot over a central bogie, and they come in a number of lengths - the most common ones seem to be a pair of 45 foot platforms as this length of container is pretty common in Europe.

My issue with building one of the 45s straight away is that... I don't have any 45 foot containers. So I'll start with 40 foot platforms first (the "sggrss" UIC wagion code) as a bit of an experiment - mainly because my container wagon building strategy to date has involved using containers as the primary structural element!

I'm not sure I saw any twin-40s on any trains on the Pass, but they obviously exist in Switzerland based on this stolen picture:

And here is one that I took, which could be 40s in front of the pusher:



While some of the articulated wagons have thin side sills, most have those angled-drop-girder-beam sides as quite visible in the top picture. The shorty-40s of these look a little skewiff compared to the 45s because the containers are not as well-'centred' over those beams that hang down between the bogies.

...

So again starting with a pair of 40 foot containers borrowed from AZL US doublestack cars and bogies off the Schauffele dump cars that were purchased for this purpose...

The dump car chassis were harvested and cut in half. Some plastic filler was inserted into one end of the containers and the bogies inserted to make up the non-articulated end:



A false plastic floor was inserted into the other end of the container to serve as a base for the articulating end. This was a bit premature as the heights of these needed to be adjusted several times later on. On this false floor will sit a brass 'subframe' that will extend out over the centre bogie which is drilled through to accept a screw which will join the pivoting brass platform halves together. 

The washers are from Microtrains N scale bogies and will be used to lift the brass subframe away from metal wheels:

The general concept and parts for the articulation mechanism are below... You can see the filed notches made in the lower brass subframe to allow the wheel flanges to pivot without hitting the sides of the brass. In actuality I had problems with these fine screws breaking when trying to screw them into the brass, so I ended up using a larger brass screw and soldering it to the 'top' of the two brass platform sub frames as can be seen below.

The two pivoting brass subframes and the bogie secured with a brass screw that is soldered to the 'top' brass platform (at the bottom in this upside down picture):


After a lot of trial and error - mainly involving trying various false floor heights inside the containers until the thing sat level; and making sure there was enough 'play' in the "mechanism" to allow the thing to pivot around tight Z scale curves - we have the structural elements of the wagon complete:

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