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: