It's an IL wind

DB says:

The container wagon class I've wanted to sit under the curtainsiders all this time is the IL, because these are what Hillside has been churning out in recent years, and their funky shaped end platforms have become common on trains. 

Down here I'd guess about 60% of  50-foot container wagons are the visually similar IH/IK/IAB (with the humped end platforms), 35% are now ILs, and 5% are odds and sods like the IAC. The plain old IA seems quite rare now.

Three IL wagons seen here at Oamaru with their funky zig-zaggy end platforms. Those end platforms have kept me from scratchbuilding them because of their different thicknesses and awkward angled pieces. But I found a plan on the KiwiRail website, managed to trace the end platform shape in PhotoShop, convert that into something that I could import into TinkerCAD, and then drew up some sides. 3-foot-6 is doing the rest:

So while those are simmering in Lewis' cooker, I might as well get started on the rest of the wagon. I started with the skeletal container attachment beams amidships. These were made of styrene, .040 x .060, cut into lengths of 7mm, with a hole partially drilled into them. The somewhat long 'twistlocks' are .010 x .040 and the long sections of .040 x.040 rod are long enough to hide behind Lewis' end platform sides.

From recent experience, its much faster to make several of these at once, so I'm making three (which later became two).

The 'twistlocks' were added to the tops of the mini side beams (remember these will be well-hidden by the containers on top, and are extra deep to provide more gluing surface when attaching them to the underside of the container floors):

And then a pair of these mini-sills were joined onto a long rod (the assembly is viewed from below here):

You might also note on the plan the blacked-in 'sides' that I did on Photoshop, as its pretty hard to see them on the as-acquired plan. 

Meanwhile, a pair of containers was joined again with key steel. As with the IH, this is the structural core of the model, and the main beams and side sills are just for looks.

About this time, I began to get nervous that the 3D printed parts wouldn't arrive before I head north to show these off at the Hamilton Train Show this weekend. 

Plan B: 

I mentioned that I made up a 'dark block' of the end platform zigzig shape on my printed plans, which was used for the 3D model. After some staring at this and thinking, I decided to try to fabricate these with HO 4x6 styrene strip which is .066 x .043. This seemed about the right size. 

I made three pieces for each platform. The inboard legs of the platforms are thicker, so this is the .066 wide stuff flat on the board with an angle cut into it. The other two pieces are the same styrene strip but sitting on their shorter .043 edges if that makes sense - the 'top' piece has an angle at each end, and the other outboard leg of the platform has an angle at one end.

You can see below the three styles of pieces that make up a platform at bottom-left, and the assembled pieces on the right side. 

Gluing these together in a straight fashion was the next challenge, but it turned out to be really easy - the thin glue that I am using just slips in between the joint and pulls the plastic pieces together tight and flat. So this was much easier and pseudo-professional than expected. The variable 'angles' aren't perfect on. my versions, but are close enough, and I can replace these with the 3d pieces if I want to later.

The completed ones in the pic above are seen 'from behind' and are flat on the visible side. 

And with some jacking pads added below (also pictured is the thin styrene glue I'm using):

...and the jacking pads have been painted yellow.

The pre-painted skeletal bits in the middle were stuck under the containers and then the platforms were fettled on. Bogies and couplers are being added here:

There still plenty of red curtainsiders floating around down here, so inspired by Russell of the North, I made some up.  FILTHS had to be included, as that one (I'm sure there are actually several of them) was quite distinctive in both islands a while back. Now even his tags have been tagged. Ken Devlin has one of the FILTHS in Sn3.5 on his layout.

On my printed sheet are also two experiments with brake dust. The 'dusty birds' container has been also desaturated and darkened, because these once-pretty containers have not stayed that pretty. Indeed a good proportion have been defaced in record time. A real shame.

As the ILs are quite new, I've not weathered these two very much, just on the main underbeam. I should put angle braces down to that but I'm not sure many people would be able to see them as they are pretty invisible on the IHs. 

I also added some of the yellow and white reflectorised patches from some Microscale US decals. These have all been sealed with semigloss clear on the ILs and flat varnish on everything else.

Right. That gives me eight of these modern curtainside wagons, as I made an IA up instead of the third IL. This last IA has Microtrains bogies because I've run out of Kato ones, and one of their MT couplers on the back end to couple up with my 40-footers on UKs (eek) at the tail of the train. Would have liked some tanktainers on this too, but these are yet to arrive from the printers.  

I've weathered the tops of the containers all slightly differently.  The red ones being the lightest and most worn. 

I've pushed and pulled the string of 15 wagons around the tight curve behind the roundhouse and through the shadow yard points and they seem to cope with that, so should have no problems on the broader Trackgang layout curves. I wouldn't want sharper curves though, as having one of these Rapido couplers body mounted and one mounted on the bogies is not ideal on long wagons through tight curves.

Brassed Off - back to those IAs

DB returns to the MMW IA wagons...

Its been many months, well years actually, but I've finally finished one of these. 

You may remember that in July I soldered a decks to an underframe quite unsuccessfully with a notable gap between the two pieces. 

Some of this is probably due to my own incompetence with folding and soldering, but even on the second wagon, being super careful, I was unable to fold these without leaving a gap. The following attempts to explain this. 

So what I decided to do in the end was to separate the side sills with their twistlock detail from the main structural beams with the nice etched hexagonal holes. 

I tried soldering the main beams of the second IA onto its deck with a slightly better, but still imperfect result. The side sills were glued to the top deck with some plastic chunks where needed to ensure things were well stuck at 90 degrees. 

After some attempts to make the bogie mounting platforms smaller (see above) to clear the wheels, I ditched the ends of the main beams, just keeping the centres with the etched holes. My bogie mounting bolsters are plastic like with my other container wagons

That all sounds a bit hokey, but it looks acceptable. 

I decided I wanted these IAs up front behind the loco, because they are the best detailed of my container wagons with their see-through beams and decking. The plan was to put tanktainers on them, so you could see through the tanktainer and the deck to the beams. But then I remembered why I'm building these in the first place - I want tall containers to sit behind the tall DM (or DLs if on tour) but alas tanktainers are the same height as little old 20 foot containers. 

So I decided to place one curtainsider on the end of this wagon beside the loco (alas this container will hide the wagon detail) and have the second slot empty (which will show some details as a consolation prize). The other IA may become a tanktainer carrier later on.

In the above picture I have some of that key steel weight between the beams. This is just under the end that will have the container and main deck, so will not be that visible, especially as the sides of it are painted black. 

This will also be a transition coupler car, with a Microtrains at the loco end, and an old school Peco/Rapido one at the other end, as the Kato bogies I am using have these. Bogies added:

The bogie at the left/loco/handbrake end is fixed with a long bolt sticking through a hole in the brass deck, the other end has a bolt that was truncated using a Dremel, into a nut glued to the deck underside

Nearing completion, with container and coupler added.

In the background are the latest experiments, being IL wagons. More to report in the next exciting episode. 

An interesting Podcast

 I've been listening to some US podcasts, and this episode is quite interesting and I thought I would share it. An interesting dsicussion on Model railways and mental health.

Just what I have been looking for.

 For a few years now, I've been looking at using servos on a layout. however mostly this involves some sort of computer programming and being a bit of a luddite I neer really progressed this. To me, digital mostly means using a finger. about a month ago I was looking for something else on Ali Express and came across this.

A single servo driver with a simple push button. The tiny screw on the top is used to set the travel.

From the bottom. The solder joint between the 2 pads close to the "1" means that the push button must be held down to get the servo to travel, and when released it returns to the zero position. breaking this solder connection and conecting the pads near "2" means that the unit "latches" ie push to move and push again to return. The unit can also be triggered by connecting 5 ergs (or volts) to the blob of solder on the right hand side, which is means that its easy to set up a remote push button switch. Wiring is easy. 5V in and plug the servo lead the right way round. You can't control the speed but thats not a deal breaker.

I have been looking for something like this to operate old semophore signals for another project. And with some MDF and wire I managed to make it work. 

Stop

Go

The potential for this is obvious to move all sorts of things, including points. Oh and they are dead cheap, mine were $6 each on my doorstep. The servos are also not hideously expensive, and surprisingly strong. I'm now planning to look at using them for point throws.

Oh and heres avideo with much more information on the ins and outs. Servo driver on the cheap.

IH Wagons in Styrene

DB continues along his merry trek...

One of the reasons I didn't make three IA wagons, is that I wanted a little variety, especially as the IA wagons are now well outnumbered down here by newer versions like the IH/IK and IL. So here is an IH. Or two.

The IH was built approx 2013-15 and includes a few features that make the newer generation of wagon classes quite different from the older IA/HK: 

• They have no 'extended end platform' with its raised handbrake on a stick. 
• They don't have a continuous side sill like the IA/HK/UK/PK, but instead have end platforms and protruding ribs in the middle to support twistlocks for the 'shorter' containers. 
• These IH (and the very similar IK) end platforms have a little central hump above the bogies when viewed from the sides. 
• They have side-mounted hand brake wheels.
• While older container flat wagons, dating back to the UK,  had their twistlocks mounted outside the side sill on a thin-bodied wagon, whereas the tops of these wagons are wider (the same width as a container), with integrated removable twistlock pockets set into the top deck.

Note the raised 'hump' on the end platform

Without the long side sills, building these will take a different tack, whereby the central rib pieces will be merely for looks, and not at all structural on the model. These were made up from some styrene shapes, as seen  below. I later replaced the central skinny square rod with some half-round at an angle to represent the central section of deck, as I figured the rods might be too fragile, hard to get lined up nice and straight, and hard to see under the containers anyway. The twistlocks are little rectangles of .015x.040 strip. Riblets:

The end platforms below were made from the same chunky rectangular styrene rod, with a thin .020 deck section between to give plenty of clearance for wheels and couplers. Oddly, these platforms have different lengths - one end of the wagon having an extra inner twistlock for some reason. 

These had bogie bolsters drilled out to take M3 bolts like the IAs, and similar Rapido coupler arrangements were effected (with one end of the wagon having a 'long' detached coupler, and the other one attached to the bogie that sits under the deck - see the IA blog entries to explain why!)

On top were glued twistlocks from the .015x.040 styrene strip. The same material was used to create the 'hump' on the platform. This isn't as pronounced as I'd have liked. The real wagons have quite a convoluted top deck shape, but as this will be hidden under containers, I figures the raised hump edges would give enough of an implication of this shapeliness. 

As can be seen above the platform ends (and the central riblets) were painted weathered black before assembly, as its always harder to paint all the fiddly bits later on. 

I had to add some additional sections of internal 'floor' inside the containers to glue the platforms to, and for later mounting of a spine rod.

It was then a simple task to line two of these containers up (one of each length!) and gluing down a 4x4mm piece of 'key stock steel' as a spine on top to join the two halves together and this also adds a little low-down weight:

You can see the coupling arrangements (one protruding, one inset) clearly in the picture above. 

Then the decorative centre side riblet pieces that were made in step 1 were attached:

Underframe sections were cut out (these are fairly plain on the prototype):

And installed. Slopey braces were fitted, along with a few underframe details, such as air tanks and cylinders. I 'painted' the inner surfaces of the sloped braces and the main underframe sides black with a sharpie pen before installing the braces, as its notoriously hard to get a paintbrush in there afterwards. 

A slightly trickier build than the IA, and done in spurts of a few hours over a couple of days, but they came out OK I reckon. 

I painted the sides a weathered brown to make the sill shapes and underframe detail pop a little. 

The IHs then had some some N scale handbrake wheels donated, reflective strip decals added, and I attempted to paint the twistlocks light grey. One of these days we will do some decals. On these newer wagons the lettering is yellow and applied to the black frame, whereas the IAs still have black class letters and numbers on a yellow patch.  

Ah, that looks better:

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).