Being Articulate - sggrss 1

I really liked the articulated container wagons that were fairly common on the Gotthard intermodal trains, even though they might be a bit advanced for this junior-level Z scale modeler.

These are two-unit container flat wagons that pivot over a central bogie, and they come in a number of lengths - the most common ones seem to be a pair of 45 foot platforms as this length of container is pretty common in Europe.

My issue with building one of the 45s straight away is that... I don't have any 45 foot containers. So I'll start with 40 foot platforms first (the "sggrss" UIC wagion code) as a bit of an experiment - mainly because my container wagon building strategy to date has involved using containers as the primary structural element!

I'm not sure I saw any twin-40s on any trains on the Pass, but they obviously exist in Switzerland based on this stolen picture:

And here is one that I took, which could be 40s in front of the pusher:

While some of the articulated wagons have thin side sills, most have those angled-drop-girder-beam sides as quite visible in the top picture. The shorty-40s of these look a little skewiff compared to the 45s because the containers are not as well-'centred' over those beams that hang down between the bogies.

...

So again starting with a pair of 40 foot containers borrowed from AZL US doublestack cars and bogies off the Schauffele dump cars that were purchased for this purpose...

The dump car chassis were harvested and cut in half. Some plastic filler was inserted into one end of the containers and the bogies inserted to make up the non-articulated end:

A false plastic floor was inserted into the other end of the container to serve as a base for the articulating end. This was a bit premature as the heights of these needed to be adjusted several times later on. On this false floor will sit a brass 'subframe' that will extend out over the centre bogie which is drilled through to accept a screw which will join the pivoting brass platform halves together. 

The washers are from Microtrains N scale bogies and will be used to lift the brass subframe away from metal wheels:

The general concept and parts for the articulation mechanism are below... You can see the filed notches made in the lower brass subframe to allow the wheel flanges to pivot without hitting the sides of the brass. In actuality I had problems with these fine screws breaking when trying to screw them into the brass, so I ended up using a larger brass screw and soldering it to the 'top' of the two brass platform sub frames as can be seen below.

The two pivoting brass subframes and the bogie secured with a brass screw that is soldered to the 'top' brass platform (at the bottom in this upside down picture):

After a lot of trial and error - mainly involving trying various false floor heights inside the containers until the thing sat level; and making sure there was enough 'play' in the "mechanism" to allow the thing to pivot around tight Z scale curves - we have the structural elements of the wagon complete:

Cheap and Nasty Container Carrier - 2

To finish off this nasty and quick container wagon, a strip of square section plastruct rod was secured along the bottom of the containers and a trapezoidal drop-side added from sturdier rod as a representation of the platform body.

Rather than add a lot of details, I scribed in some vertical lines to represent the stiffening ribs (which should have been done properly as '3d' items but couldn't really be bothered for this wagon. I also painted on twistlocks in yellow and took a picture of it.

It looked blah, so I added the tie-down extensions above the bogie bolsters using squares of plasticard rod, and the protective pipe-bits around them using fine wire. Then I added squares of fine plasticard to represent the twistlocks over my badly painted jobs.

I didn't take many pictures of these steps in the tidying up of this quick and dirty wagon as I wasn't that enamoured with it during the process.

But after repainting some grey over the mess and picking out the twistlocks and tiedown extensions carefully in yellow, plus some random squares in white to represent fictional reflector strips and signs it doesn't look to horrible after all.

This is a trick I learned in 1:120 - painting on some random squares here and there and picking out details can make a model look a lot more detailed than it actually is. I've recently added such paint-'lies' to the blue wagon as well and it has tarted that up quite nicely as well.

A little weathering was applied using Tamiya Weathering Master soft pastels - mainly brown streaks on the wagon body and a little white and black on the containers, over acrylic washes that had been pre-applied.

Sure the containers are a bit small, but on the real Gotthard trains, the containers and swapbodies come in all sizes and shapes so this doesn't look so bad hidden amongst a string of wagons now that it has been finished off.

Cheap and Nasty Container Carrier - 1

(Happy New Year! I'm a bit behind in the blog here, despite doing a little Z amongst other modeling projects of late, so lets make a start in catching up...)

In a misplaced desire to expand my container train beyond its initial two wagons, a plan was hatched to build another sgndd-style 60 foot container flat featuring some Rohukan 20 foot containers on top. Being rib-sided and quite nicely painted up, these are visually different from the AZL and Microtrains 40s (and halved 40s) used so far, but unfortunately, despite being marketed as 1:220th they are a bit underscale in height and width.

Ah well, let's get building anyway.

Marklin Germany refused to sell me Y25 bogies for scratchbuilding projects and while I've since found that  FreudenreichFeinwerktechnik sell Y25s for a reasonable fee, a fair deal was secured last year on a bunch of Marklin 'Schauffele dump cars'. These look far more ridiculous than a US Difco or NZR Yd, but the high-stepping prototype does indeed exist. They were purchased solely with the intention of dispensing with the silly-looking tops and harvesting the bogies for container cars.

The dump cars were separated into their component pieces and the black plastic chassis chopped into thirds once the various weights were prised off (including, rather cleverly, the four vertical air piston cylinders):

The chassis-thirds, comprising bogies complete with headstocks and pivots, were attached into the containers by glueing the headstock onto the container-end and the other end of the chassis onto some plasticard filler thus:

The three containers were then glued together with little plasticard joiners between them for spacing - the edges of the joiner pieces were blacked with a marker pen - as per the picture below. You might also just make out some of the boxy white plasticard filler inside the containers here that the black plastic chassis bits were secured to:

Ta daaa. Now as a one-piece:

A piece of brass strip was then glued to the bottom for additional strength and a little added weight.

So that's the functional pieces stuck together and left to set - as it took all of about 5 minutes to get to this point. Next time, we'll throw some cosmetics onto the sides of the wagon.

Starting the North Hill

I ventured into the trainroom yesterday armed with a gluegun and cardboard, and before you know it, had bodged up one of the two 'big' hills on the layout.

This one, at the 'northern' end of Wassen, sits above the church and big 'middle Meinreuss' viaduct.

Bounded by a freshly installed backscene, the hill hides a spiral of track that allows for some elevation gain on the model between the middle and upper Meinreuss bridges.

The backscene (white) has been cut away and both it and the hillside support each other, providing good access to the hidden trackage of the spiral and also the staging yard below for cleaning, maintenance and to deal with any incidents! 

View from the Wattinger end.

Moving at double-time

Its been almost six months since something moved on this layout - I was trying to show my brother a train moving over Christmas and found that the soldering of wires from my two transformers into the block switchbox are a bit flakey and of course there was scenery in progress everywhere, so little movement was had.

But since I was helping a local fellow out with getting his layout moving yesterday, why not do the same with mine.

It turns out that one of the transformer input pairs is fine, so half an hour was spent cleaning tracks and running a pair of locos around. A small tweak needed to be made to a section of track in the yard where things would sometimes pop off, and some scenery had to be trimmed back for more clearance for the uphill track at the Wattenger Tunnel portal and at a bit of glue-shell scenery covering part of the upper spiral.

But soon enough I had a pair of trains running reliably - one up and one down:

I suppose a vid should have been taken of them crossing, but we might save that for another time. 

Some findings:

1. The locos still sound like English Electric diesel locos.
2. On the plus side, it still works, despite the incursion of scenery around the bottom track.
3. The trains run really well (again despite the above).
4. Its generally a mistake to push the trains through tight curves as the couplers complain.
5. Some of the wagons are light and temperamental unless at the back of trains. A shame that I can't add weight because:
6. There's no way to run the length of trains I'd really like to today on these grades - the stock locos don't have enough weight.
7. My two BLS locos run at quite different speeds, despite being based upon the same Marklin model. Must keep running them in and might have to use diodes to slow the fast one down (although the slow one is really quite slow).

RES-uming Service

Its been several months since I did anything productive in the train room, being busy with travel and life of late. However, today I did venture down into the cave and figured that weathering a couple of wagons would be a quick an easy project for an hour.

As a result, here are three newly 'olded' wagons for the freight train - an RES flat with a couple of old sleepers in it, and a pair of telescoping-top SHIMMNS steel wagons. * As always, those wagon type codes are approximations only.

All were weathered with acrylic washes and a touch of chalks afterwards. Hardly works of art, but they look ok from the requisite distance.

I do have a third steel wagon in brown that I must turn into this bluey colour that SBB uses. In time it would be quite nice to have a whole train of them, but that might be quite a way off as I'd need to find or make another 7 or 8...

BLS 486 Alpinist - 4

After re-assembly, a few pics were taken at Wattinger taken with the big camera (so they are even in focus for once). No wonder the trainspotters up by the curve are looking thrilled at progress to date.

There are a few more things I'll do to finish these locos at some stage, but that will have to wait for a future installment. In the meantime, the blog will be taking a short pause for two weeks while steamier quarry are hunted in mysterious eastern lands.