In which I don’t announce a change to 1:87 scale.
So I’d almost completed the railcar, and as is fairly common for me, I get distracted by something else, namely building a 1:55 scale 40′ container, as you do. The nice people over at the MTI Forum had put a print of container sides with their logo up, and very kindly gave me permission to print one out. So a couple of evenings and several pieces of former cereal packet later, and I’ve got my container, and a problem. Put against the railcar, the container looks tiny. This meant that somewhere I got the numbers wrong: either the container was too small, or the railcar far, far too big.
It was the railcar. A quick check on the forum showed that the Container was correctly scaled which means that the railcar I’ve been laboriously building is way oversize. Ouch. So now it’s back to the drawing board and rescaling the railcar design so that at some point when I feel up to it, I can restart the project. It’s not a total loss though: I’ve learned a lot, mostly that simple looking stock with subtle corners is a lot harder to build than it looks, and rescaling has a lot of advantages, namely that the stock will be a lot shorter and narrower than I thought, so I don’t have to worry so much about overhang, which means I’ll be able to fit more inAdd to this the fact we’re hunting for a bigger flat, and the boys seem to have learned that shelves are not climbiung frames, and there may be a layout in the offing, when I’m a bit less busy…
But first I’ll be doing some less adventurous stock building. Methinks that container could do with a wagon to run on.
Sorry to hear about your “scaling error”, but glad to hear you realised before making any other stock to match. Perhaps you could put the first attempt on eBay?
Oh dear! What scale is the railcar? You could build a micro single line terminus for it.
I’d better start thinking about intermodal wagons again now that you’ve got a container and are thinking about wagons as I remember us discussing building intemodal wagons in our respective scales.
Sorry to hear about scale in consistency..
.. as for wagon, were you thinking of something like this
http://www.haribu.ch/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=lasthits&cat=19&pos=25
😀
t.
Ouch indeed ! 🙂
Well, it happens, thanks for the encouraging comments… As you say Stephen, at least I didn’t make any coaches or anything. I’m guessing the railcar is near to 1:43 scale and I just got into the habit of thinking in that scale.
I’m planning to make a wagon like tom’s suggestion for 20′ containers but I think that could be a bit long for a 40′ unit so bogies will have to go underneath which will be a challenge. Maybe Zabdiel and I should work to make our own and see how similar it comes out.
In the meantime I got distracted over the weekend and make something totally different. I’ll post it when I have time…
Oh, you mean you’re not starting in Zn15?
My ideas were for a wagon of the size of the ones in Tom’s link so it’s good to see they exist. I’ve just written a blog post on my thoughts. I almost posted them here but then I’ll forget and not be able to find them!