Ribbed for her pleasure: PSK Modelbouw 40ft TT containers

DB says: I'd had these PSK Modelbouw 1:120 scale containers on back order from a New Jersey outfit for about 9 months and thus completely forgotten about them, so what a nice surprise to find a box full of boxes in the mail today.

Now that summer has come to an end up in the northern hemisphere, the ice floes must have melted enough a month or so back to allow a rowboat, sitting low in the water and stuffed with TT merchandise, to sneak past the border guards.

I thought these things were made in Poland or the former Czechland or Euroslavia or thereabouts, but the packages are actually marked 'Holland', so I'm surprised they aren't easier to get a hold of - given that Nether-Nether Land is a fully paid up member of the euronomic zone. If PSK stuff is not available in NZ, perhaps some enterprising retailer could be convinced to bring some in.

They are reasonably well detailed - the sides are basic, but look fine. The roof is a bit blah and the end without the door could probably use more ribs, but none of that is worth losing any sleep over after some weathering is applied. They seem to scale out nicely on the NZ120 UK plan I have. One of the reaaaally nice things about these containers is that while they make a few crazy colourful ones, they also make a few varietals in nice plain shades of reddy-brown, so straight from the box you could stick them on your trains.

Note that while these specimens are barely OK for my Hokitika milk powder traffic and similar older containers - they are the same height as the old NZR logo'd TBC containers - they are certainly not the 40 foot 'high cubes' you probably desire if you model the 'rest of the country' in modern times. I suppose if one was careful, it might be possible to very carefully cut two containers in 'almost-half' along the long side, sand the cut edges perfectly flat, and carefully join two more-than-halves together to make a taller high cube that you could then cast. Then again, someone - as yet unknown to me - might already make high cubes in TT, you never know.

A little weathering, a half-arsed decal and an at least partially-arsed DB-Instant-Resin-UK later, we see one posing at Moana.

The sheep don't ever seem worried by the posed trains and towering camera...

As an aside, this is one of my resin one-piece UKs on MT trucks (with couplers removed). I used to stick the couplers on the ends of the wagon and then use brass washers between the bogies and the wagon to lift the deck up so the couplers matched. With the recent IA experience, I think its important to get that low-rider look our wagons have, so I mounted the bogies directly onto the casting and used Microtrains underslung couplers. Noice. I'll be doing that in future...

Here's a real Cronos 40 footer plus UK at Oamaru (with the optional CPC logo) a few months back:


Rating: two thumbs up.