Plastic fantastic IA wagons

DB still needed some 'modern' flat wagons to go under his fancy new containers. 

Yes, I do need to get back to those brass IAs, but before I overcome that mental hurdle, maybe there is an easier way for now.  Three-foot-six models have some decent looking IAs that are 3d-printed in metal, but are $50 a pop and I usually have to do a fair bit of dremelling to them to make my chosen bogies and couplers fit.

The nicely detailed 3D printed ones, along with the MMW IAs, and the 3D printed 'open' UKs, also look at their skeletal best when empty, or carrying something see-through like a pair of tanktainers. 

To carry my long (prototype 7600mm) long GSH containers, it almost seems a waste to hide all that fancy etched or printed underframe detail and open decking under containers.

So maybe some cheap and nasty IAs could be made up from styrene, modelled off the MMW one?

.080x.080 rodding looked right for the chunky side sills that the HK/IA wagons have, with 14mm wide sections of thin sheet to hold them apart. My builds here are slightly skeletonised in their construction to give plenty of room for swivelling couplers and wheels. The bits that are open will be covered by the containers anyway.

I'm using Japanese 'Taki' bogies that are occasionally produced by Kato. I found these available as 'spare parts' several years ago on HobbySearch, but they are a short run item that was out of stock. I clicked on 'notify me when available' and forgot about them. Last year, I received an email saying they were suddenly orderable again, so I signed up for ten pairs. 

They are a bit larger than Microtrains (Japan usually models in 1:150 rather than the Americans with their 1:160), with larger metal wheels. If you get your monocle out, you'll see they have leaf springs  rather than coils, but the main downside is they have old school Rapido couplers on shortish shanks. 

As the IA has a handbrake platform at one end that protrudes out a way from the bogie mounting point, I decided to cut a coupler off the bogie and mount it onto this extension. As such, the coupler 'sticks out' from the wagon end like dog's roundels.

At the other end, an as-delivered bogie plus coupler would be mounted at the prototypical bogie pivot location, so its shorty coupler would be almost entirely under the wagon. But coupling two wagons with this arrangement (one short coupler and one protruding) would provide a good coupling distance between them. Obviously this means these wagons, plus any more that I make with these bogies, will be operated as a fairly fixed modern intermodal consist, with a microtrains coupler at each end of the rake.

Twistlocks were 'inferred' from .040x.040 rod. 

Underneath the wagon is a 4x4mm piece of 'key stock steel' from the local engineering shop as a spine to provide stiffness and a little weight. 

An ornate coupler box has also been constructed for the sticky-out handbrake end, and the wagon was then crudely painted, and holed for a M3 bolt and nut.

And with containers placed on top, these will look the part from the mandated viewing distance.

A final touch was adding some underframe detail, although this is barely visible beneath the deep IA side sills. 

There seem to be two versions of the IA, the ones modelled in the MMW kit (and in the prototype pic at the top of this) have a zillion smaller holes in the underframe beams, and the other style has 11 larger holes. As I happened to have a plan of the latter, I made this up after 'painting in the holes' black in photoshop and printed it out on the laser printer. Then a wash of brown was applied so the black 'holes' still show through. Hard to see on the finished picture. 

I believe the prototype only has an air tank on one side, but I ended up putting one on each side. 

Overall, these two styrene IAs were not difficult to build other than the coupler boxes. They probably took two hours to do each (four for the pair), but on the plus side, a wagon costs less than $5 in styrene and steel. 

Bolts/bogies and couplers are extra, but would also have to be provided if I'd purchased a 3D printed wagon frame. And had I bought one of those, I'd still have spent more than half an hour modifying it to take my bogies and couplers anyway.

And they were fun to make. It was a good idea to build two wagons at once, as the time to cut out another set of bits once the pondering was done was minimal. I probably should have made three!

Still needs some decals, some paint detailing, and handbrake stands applied. Fortunately some of the IAs have 'plain' lever handbrakes mounted above the deck (see the prototype pic at the top here).