Articulation again - sggmrss 90 part 3. Welcome Mr Samskip.

 Today I stuck on my blue laser printed Samskip container sides and roof from the large sheet of container sides I had printed by a print shop up a long time ago. Some of the sides were pictures of mine and others that I perspective-corrected in photoshop, and some were blatantly stolen from the internet. Something I don't approve of, but at least this is not for any commercial purpose.

As mentioned last time, it's lucky I painted the container ends blue because I forgot my master plan and joined the two halves together before sticking the printed container ends on - In the end I didn't use any printed bits on any of the container 'ends', relying on the blue paint. The printed pieces are on the sides and roofs.

 Overall the wagon looks "OK but not great", maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10.

The thing that irks me about the wagon is that I've made the drop-sides a hair shallower than the plan, and coupled with the tall bogies, the whole thing looks like it sits a little high off the rails. This is something that annoys me about many of the the Marklin wagons, and that I have tried to overcome in most of my previous intermodal efforts... yet seem to have failed to notice here until everything was all but finished. It's quite noticeable against the 2x40-footer next to it in the picture above, although the sides are probably a little deep on this one!

Is this fixable? I suppose I could build new deeper drop-sides, but that seems like a lot of rework, so will likely write it off as a lesson learned. When embedded in the train I suppose it doesn't look so bad. I suppose I could also remove the bogies and the brass articulation assembly and mount them further up inside the wagon. This might be more palatable. We shall see

Now I have 11 or 12 intermodal 'wagons' (counting the articulateds as two). Another two or three would make a decent length intermodal train that would suit the layout. Unfortunately my locomotives won't be able to pull a train of that length up the hill anyway!

Here is my prototype pic for comparison. Maybe with some weathering the high-riding sides will be less noticeable. 

 

Articulation again - sggmrss 90 part 2.

This evening I spent an hour or two putting some detail onto the 'wagon sides'. I figured I'd do the same as on the 2x40-footer, so started by putting twistlocks in the corners. D'oh, on 45-foot containers, the twistlocks are inset at the 40-foot mark so that both container sizes can use the same set of twistlocks on a wagon. I should have known that... Rather than rip them off, I just added some extras in the correct places.  These were little cubes cut from .030x.030 inch Evergreen styrene rod.

Some vertical strengthening ribs were added to the deep part of the sides with .010x.020 rod as I had done with the 2x40-footer, which is a lot easier than it looks. 

• I cut a dozen or more little lengths of the rod oversize and put a tiny puddle of styrene glue on something (like waxed paper).
• Pick up a little length of rod by the end using tweezers (gently so so it doesn't ping onto the floor).
• Twist it if necessary so you are holding the rod in the right orientation (I had them so the ribs stick out a wee way(.020) and look skinny from the side (.010)
• Coat most of a long edge in the glue by dabbing it in the puddle. Avoid getting any glue on the tweezers or the rod will stick to them instead of to the wagon side.
• Put it in place. If there is not enough glue, you may need to re-dab the rod in the puddle again.
• Adjust it to be vertical (my built-in 90 degree protractor seems to get less and less accurate each year) and parallel to its neighbours. I decided to to a pair of these ribs at the ends of the drop down and one in the centre - there are loads of different makers and styles of these wagons so this is just "close enough to give the impression of detail." In the real world these are usually placed below the various sets of twistlocks.
• After they have set, put the outside of the wagon down onto something like a block of wood and trim all the excess pieces of the ribs to be the same length as the sides with a sharp knife.

A base piece along the bottom of these sides was added for strength and looks. I should have continued this up the angled parts as well, but decided it wasn't really necessary. And I was feeling lazy. A few other bits were added over the bolsters, and then a touch of grey paint added.

A little blue was dribbled onto the ends and corners of the containers as an experiment. As you will see in the next edition, I'm glad I did this. The 'easy' end bogies also got attached at some stage. 

It's starting to come together....

Articulation again - sggmrss 90 part 1.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I made a nifty articulated pair of 40-foot wagons - (sggrss part 1 ,  part 2 and part 3). I can't believe that was more than six years ago!

A 40-foot set was built because I had some nice 40-foot American Z Lines (AZL) containers on hand, but I never actually saw 40-foot articulated platforms on the Gotthard, they all seemed to be 45-foot pairs. In the alphabet soup that is European wagon classification, these may be called "sggmrss 90." Here is a picture of one I took at Wattinger a long time ago.

So it seems logical to finally make one of these. Once again, the containers will provide most of the structural strength here, so I began this saga some time ago by (badly) sawing a pair of 40 foot containers in half. I think these came from MicroTrains Z scale American doublestack wagons. They were then stuck back together with some styrene rod inside in an expanded position so they were 45 feet long.

A start was then made on the wagon sides, which will hang under the containers. As I don't have much .040x.040 inch styrene strip left, I used skinny .010x.040 for the long top pieces (and will probably regret that later). The 'drop' parts of the sides were made from .010 x .080 using the plan as a guide for cutting the angles.

I started marking the 'inboard' angles with a fine black marker (as above) on the cut pieces before I realised the inboard and outboard angles were the same, so it didn't matter which end was which!

The drop sides were attached to the thin, long underframe pieces with some backing styrene. Of course it does matter which end is which here, as the drop sides are not centred, but located towards the middle of the articulated wagon to clear two axles on the outer ends but only one with the shard bogie in the middle if that makes sense. It goes without saying that I accidentally made three of one side and one of the other! Fortunately I had cut enough pieces for 8 sides (with a plan to make two wagons before I hit on a smarter way to make these).

Then it was time to attack the bogies, or drehgestell if you prefer. These came from my weird-looking Marklin 82434 Schauffele dump cars that were purchased for their Y25 bogies because they were the least costly wagons available at the time.

The two end bogies are easy to install with their attached frames, but the center bogie has to be popped off and have its mushroom-shaped mounting pin and the coupler removed. Note that the inboard face of the coupler remains, as this helps hold the wheel in.

Then it was carefully drilled for the brass screw (as the bogie is made from that tough, shiny plastic: carefully). Two articulating brass pieces were then prepared which will be attached under the containers.  Although plastic washers (from N scale Microtrains bogies) will be used to separate the bogie away from the brass strips, I shape the lower one to make sure there is no chance the brass will impede the turning of the bogie or cause an electrical short if the wheel flanges touch it. 

This lower piece of brass has been shaped with a file in the picture above. Hardly a work of art, but nobody should ever see it again. A brass screw is used so it can be soldered to the top piece of brass, which has been prepared in the picture below.

Two Microtrains washers were used (rather than one visible here). 

All soldered up. Carefully! The top of the screw was then cut off with a Dremel, taking pauses to prevent everything getting to hot. The whole assembly swivels as it should. Its a little tighter than the 40-foot model, but there seems to be enough play.