Stock design 01: Intermodal

For the self-respecting modern, customer-orientated narrow gauge railway with freight ambitions and one eye on the bottom line, the ‘Must-have’ accesory is a container wagon. Transporter wagons or rollboks have their very useful place, but they are specialised and complicated bits of kit, whereas the good old ISBU container is simple and needs pretty normal [...]

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What NG Could be -2

Posting is a bit sporadic at the moment because I’m still trying to get everything sorted for the move, and there isn’t enough banmdwidth in the world to detail the trials and tribulations of dealing with utilities companies.
In the hope of switching off, I had a brief look at YouTube and found this gem of [...]

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Downsizing 2…

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 [...]

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The Dilemma

I really like making modern image narrow gauge models, and I’ve been talking a bit to John P. about container wagons for forty-foot containers, which I’d like to try in 5.5mm scale. I’m intending to make a layout for the railcar as soon as I can, although that’s not likely to be very soon: assuming [...]

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Skippy

Recently, I was running an errand and I passed a factory that uses a lot of roll-on containers, and very obligingly stores them next to the cycle path. So I took some photos in preparation for the skip-building project. This one shows the variety in these ‘standard’ designs. I know I should start by making [...]

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Transports of delight.

The van is coming together: the bogies are now properly fixed, the “bodge” referred to last week having been replaced by self-tapping screws (thank you Chris Krupa and Steve Bennet for pointing out the obvious solution), the ends are approximately vertical and properly attached, and the sides will be built over the next week. Remarkably [...]

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Contain Yourself 2

I was trying to make a highly original and witty title for this: as you can see I failed.
Finally the 20′ ISO container is orange. It’ll have to wait until after Japan for transfers, but at least it’s the right colour. For a while it was a sort of sludgy brown- far too foul for [...]

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Organised Modelmaking

Yesterday Stephan (My eldest son) and I spent the afternoon bashing nails into wood and produced “Daddy’s Modelling tools box” My modelmaking tools were languishing in old ice cream boxes and my wife was quite reasonably getting fed up of it cluttering our office/bedroom. It was this or be banished to the outer darkness of [...]

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Going Postal

The “container question” continues. Whilst I’m not planning to make a collection like that on Nick Gurney’s intermodal model, I think there may be more than one running on the KÖB, and I’m too cheap to get another kit, so I’ve been looking at tanktainers, swapbodies and roll-on containers and anything with flat sides until [...]

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Contain Yourself…

I’m the proud owner of a grey resin box, just recognisable as a model iso container. No numbers, details, or even locking mechanisms as yet, but it’s a start. Besides, I’ve got all the help I need on details because there are websites out there belonging to container enthusiasts, people who travel around the place [...]

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