Spiny Sgnss

I thought one of these empty 'skeletonal' Sgnss wagons might show off a tanktainer rather nicely. If you deploy Mr Google's image search, you will quickly see that there are many, many varietals of this class of wagon - I guess every manufacturer in every country has slightly different ideas around number, size and placement of beams, bracing, brake gear and overall form while sticking to the standard size and the placement of twistlocks.


Many, many moons ago, when I had the loan of a friend's Dremel, I had a buzz at one of my Marklin bogie flat chassis like so:

A few ugly incisions with a cutting wheel opened the thing up (albeit in a pretty messy way). Nonetheless, with a few distracting elements made of paper along the top, and a 20 foot container (shortened from a 40) to cover one end, plus the tanktainer on the other:

It's starting to come together.

As an aside, I did have reservations about using this Marklin chassis rather than making my own, for these are really a tad wider than they should be - with the side sills sticking out slightly beyond even the overweight AZL/MicroTrains containers. Ah still, hopefully nobody will notice when it is inserted into a train.

Additional paper underbraces (I'm not sure paper is such a good idea either, (nor the PVA used for welding all this together) but I'm hoping a good dollop of paint will ensure things stay stuck together.

Deep in the bowels of the main wagon frames were added some 'brake reservoirs' made from old black sprue and something I'm rounding-up to 'brake cylinders and detail' that came off one of those yellow Schauffele dump cars that are all being turned into intermodal wagons:

 And with a lick of green (I don't know why I chose green, but why not...)

I've painted green 'detail' onto the solid ends of the wagon at the tanktainer end as these might be visible though its structural bracing. You might note that the Bertschi tank has received a few random bits of walkway and detail on its top. The red 20 footer has had a razor saw line and two holes added on top to match the other end's vastly overscale details. You could lose a foot or even an entire leg in those twistlock holes.

When the green has set I'll have a go at adding some twistlocks and other details to the outside before sticking the containers down.


P.S. Thanks to Carim Z for the comment on my slow running Alpinist - I will check out that idea. For some reason I don't seem able to reply to your comment with a thanks, so: Thanks!