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 headed 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. 

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

...and jacking pads painted yellow.

The pre-painted skeletal bits in the middle 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 around the tight curve and they seem to cope with that, so should have no problems on the broader Trackgang layout curves.