Stick this in urea: HEC Bulk Urea Containers

DB writes:

Things have been a little slow at the International Dandruff Embassy lately due to an accidental mis-painting of my KiwiRail DX, but we’ll save that for a later edition.

You may recall I cast a few HCC coal containers a while back; and indeed I made quite a few more than the one-wagonsworth that I really needed until the mold reached a state where the castings required as much work to clean them up as they would have to build from scratch. Drat and blast all those undercuts and sharp riblets. But what to do with the spares after my Trademe excursion proved quite unworthwhile…? In the words of Douglas from that superb Instant Kiwi commercial: Think I might try sumthung duffrunt.


Fettler, A, Mr. came to the rescue with something I’d completely forgotten about: those nifty HEC Bulk Urea containers that were basically HCCs with tops on. Sounds like a plan. Pic above courtesty Andrew Hamblyn.


Starting with a set of stuffed and mounted HCCs that I prepared earlier, a raised section was added in the middle to represent the roof hatches and from there I began to haphazardly cut and paste random pieces of plastic to make the pyramoidial top in situ (a word that I leaned from Little Trains of Thought). This was easier than expected given all the angles - simply measure twice and cut once as the old saying goes. Then eyeball, cut a slightly different angle, no not that much, a little shorter, a smidge off again, and again, and …now it’s too short… Throw away. Rinse and Repeat.

After the roof was on, wee triangles were cut and attached to it so they could hold up some N scale brass treadplate walkway. I expect on the real thing these were probably see-through, in which case mesh might have been better, but this will do for now.

Lastly, using the festering pus that is Superglue, styrene corner posts were attached to the corners of the HCC castings in a direction approximating the vertical and supporting braces added. I just can’t wait ‘til the first time this thing derails and plummets to the floor.

To finish up, a smear of paint and decal gives life to a rarely modeled prototype. The weathering is pretty subtle under normal lighting despite appearances in this flashed pic. I'd better stick to flash shots of real trains. P.S. I dunno why most of the pics I'm posting aren't clickable, but I managed to make the last one here work:

P.P.S. After seeing the prototype pic, it looks like I need to add the top walkways on the end as well. No worries.

P.P.P.S. Weekend final update for the HEC of it complete with the top/end platforms :

Bingo!