One of my favourite Z scale wagons is this semi-scratchbuilt SGNSS container wagon. You can see how it was built by viewing the three preceding posts in the blog as well. It looks quite decent really, fairly 'fine' and 'scale' looking, although the side knobs that the tiedown hooks are attached to are a little oversize.
That, and another crappier wagon, were built using the plastic guts of a bogie wagon halved and stuffed up into containers that are glued together to form the real structure of the wagon. The visible sides of the wagon chassis are just for looks.
Another alternative to this approach is to use what Marklin uses for its rudimentary container wagons: the 'long flat chassis' that sits under a lot of their Z wagon models.
I happen to have ended up with more 'red long curtain wagons' and those RES stake wagons. I quite like them but have more than were needed. But if you pop the tops off.... voila - the chassis becomes Marklin's container wagon. I've used two of these already - one as a fairly chunky container wagon and another as a skeletal version.
The problem with using these (and the problem with Marklin's container wagon offering is that the deck is really too thick in height (so the flat top of the wagon sits too high off the rails) and too wide - often sticking out wider than the containers themselves (depending which Z scale containers you have purchased! ISO I don't think so). Prototypically the wagon should be thinner than the container so the twistlocks, which sit out proud from the wagon frame, fit into the container's corner ISO twistlock holes. I.e. the twistlocks should be the width of the container, not the wagon.
So to remedy this, I need to thin the metal deck down and then hope to hang the containers over the sides to remedy both issues.
After some quizzical expressions were released over how they are attached, it turns out that the bogies just pop off.
Interestingly one has a massive amount of casting flash on one side. That might impair running qualities. It was hard to see this, so I outlined it in blue here in Photoshop. Only on one side, and only on one bogie. The pic was taken while applying a wash of brown weathering to the frames....
The frame that I have thinned is the brown one below and has been thinned out by rubbing the edge on a coarse file. The donor red plastic shell is also shown, the black chassis is an untouched one, and the brown one is the one that I have thinned.
And upside down... In the pic above the little dimples (I suppose representing in-deck twistlock holes) it might just be visible in the above pic. I filed down to these holes enough so that my container sides are wider than the thinned wagon.
That didn't take as long as I'd feared... I painted the wagon edges with a grey primer - I will eventually finish the wagon in grey like the first one linked on this page.
I have also started to prepare some containers. I think the Mitsui was from an AZL US stack train and the tanktainer was a Shapeways item.
You may be able to see that I have cut down the bottom of both ends of the silver container. This will allow the sides to hang down over the thick wagon frame - visually reducing its thickness and lowering the load so it seems to sit closer to the railhead. Unfortunately the tanktainer is a little skinnier so I have extended its edges lower (another strip of red plastruct square rod) and beveled the flat chassis in the hope of achieving the same effect. I painted the deck under the tanktainer a dark grey for now.
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