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.