Tanktainers in Z Scale

I've always wanted a few tanktainers in my intermodal train, and they were reasonably common on the tracks around Wassen in the good old days - as one of my Wattinger pics taken in 2015 attests. As can be seen, the prototypes come in various lengths and the bracing and tank shapes take many forms.

For a year or more I've wondered about using styrene tube or bits of old plastic pens for the tanks and building the frames out of Plasticard, but then someone called Ngineer goes and puts a pair of 20 footers on Shapeways at a reasonable price. And that's hard to resist.

The parcel arrived promptly. It's been four or five years since I've ordered anything on Shapeways, and these seem to be of much higher print resolution - thus exhibiting far less visible strata - than those early examples. Possibly this is a new material too.

The downside is that there are a few warped bits as you might see in the above pic (before the pair were seperated). I'm not sure if this is due to the material, or heating in transit, or squeezing in transit, or possibly the designer expecting too much of the thin and flimsy unsupported material. The latter might explain the long top rails, but that there are also kinks in some of the short lower struts but not others make me wonder if this print might have been removed and mis-handled too quickly before it really hardened.

Interestingly, these tanks are a similar size to the Rokuhan Z scale 20 foot containers (in blue below) - which are noticeably smaller than the Microtrains or AZL American doublestack behind. Heights vary, but an ISO width should be an ISO width in Z scale, so the products of one of these two camps aren't to scale. Must have a measure one day.

The offending pre-mentioned saggy bits were removed, and some paint was slopped on:

Replacement framing from thin styrene strip being installed:

And that was as complex as I decided to go for now. Roofwalks, ladders and railings might be added at some later stage.

As for prototypes, I've had a Bertschi and a Den Hartogh in mind for a while now, and had doodled up some artwork for them a long time ago. This was printed out on a colour laser printer today, cut out, glued on, and voila's your uncle.

Decals would have been better than a thick sheet of printer paper of course, but not dramatically so for those of us that vigorously enforce the mandated minimum viewing distances, and this worked out pretty cheaply as I printed off a few other things on the same sheet (plus spares of these in case of screw-ups or if more are desired in future).

The finished-ish containers are perched here on a Marklin flat chassis with the blue Rokuhan 20 footer for the pics, but these bits will be made into a 'proper' wagon at some stage.

The Bertschi brown should be a smidge redder, but I can live with that for now.