I just found a reasonably inexpensive source for corrugated cardboard boxes to store and carry my rolling stock in.
Early in my time in the hobby I foolishly threw out most of my rolling stock boxes because I had set up several shelves on which to display all my cars. As time has progressed those shelves are starting to overflow. I now have boxcars three deep in some places, and of course they are all gathering dust. Some cars came without boxes so that has added to the problem too.
I decline to pay eBay sellers two or three dollars each for empty boxes so I decided to see what I could find on line. I very quickly discovered these guys:
I just ordered 25 boxes that are 14" x 6" x 2". They will hold four standard freight cars each, and they were only $0.81 each plus shipping. That works out to about $0.37 per car. Unfortunately the source doesn’t offer partitions but I figure I can make those.
The boxes are a good buy for we Canadians IMO, but I’m sure there must be similar companies in the USA.
Now I can get my storage shelves in much better shape![:D]
And for folks south of the Great White North border, there are some reasonably priced train storage boxes from Spring Mill Depot. I’ve got a couple of these and plan on getting more - Spring Mill Depot rolling stock storage boxes with foam inserts $10 each and can store a bunch of freight cars (e.g. 27 45’ hoppers). [Y]
FWIW, you may not want to use gray foam-on-paint for long-term storage. You might run the risk of the foam sticking to the paint on your rolling stock after a while.
I line all my Axian Technology (AT) foam-lined storage boxes with tissue paper - top & bottom - as a barrier between my rolling stock and foam. That is one of the precautions AT recommends with their product.
Since I’m in-between layouts at this point in time, all my rolling stock is in long-term storage but in a dry place.
FWIW, the Spring Mill Depot boxes come with sheet plastic if foam sticking is a concern - I imagine you could line both top and bottom. Of course, the better your storage boxes, the more they will cost. I believe there are storage boxes available which all you to store rolling stock upright on their wheels, and they are considerably more expensvie IIRC. I don’t recall the name and cost right now.
These Grand Central Gems extra large boxes are great for locos but as noted not cheap. I like the way the locos can be inserted and lifted out with wheels down, using thin plastic like a kitchen garbage bag piece (I think such plastic is included). Probably overkill / too pricey for cars.
I tried to find some of the Spring Mills Depot boxes but nobody had them in stock in Canada, and shipping from the US made them rather pricey.
Had I given the boxes a little more thought I would have ordered them 3" tall instead of 2". That would have allowed me to stand the cars on their wheels and I could get 6 cars per box instead of 4.
I’m going to use paper napkins as padding. They are dirt cheap (500 for less than $10) and a single napkin should provide four layers of paper if the napkin is only unfolded half way (the length of each napkin will allow it to go around the car twice).
I looked at the sold out Grand Central Gems boxes and at $20 each, I am NOT impressed with what you get for the money, which is essentially a Spring Mill box with different dimensions for double the price that allow you put loco’s or cars in on their wheels vs. sideways. If Spring Mill came out with them, they’d sell them for $10 ea and probably like hot cakes.
But hey, they sold so I guess some people were willing to buy them at that price. I have seen some other train storage boxes sold that looked a lot more impressive and stored trains upright, but don’t recall the brand and they were pricier of course but at least you got something a lot better than a
Plus the Uline boxes would stack nice an orderly if you were tight on space. Good idea, thanks for sharing!
One thing about Uline, once they have your shipping address, you may well start to recieve the quaterly catalog, which is the size of a small phone book. We used them as a vendor where I work, I purchased some large boxes in 2011, and still get a catalog. [:O]
Yes, the catalogue is pretty hefty. I was amazed at the variety of products they carry but interestingly I couldn’t find the size or quantity of packing material that I needed. I wanted some thin bubble wrap 6" wide to put around the cars in the boxes. The narrowest they had was 12". No problem I said, I can easily cut the 12" wide stuff into 6" strips. Then I realized that the minimum order quantity was something like 12 - 250’ rolls. Uh, no thanks. I’m going to buy a package of cheap paper napkins and they will do just fine.[(-D]
Being able to stack the boxes easily, and retrieve individual boxes from within the stack easily, was one of my priorities. The smaller Uline boxes will suit that fine. One of the questions I had about the rather large Spring Mill boxes was where the heck I was going to put them.
When someone says cheap, I am thinking as close to free as I can get. At this point I only have about 40 pieces of rolling stock and 6 locomotives (all steam). But since I am still doing extensive work on my layout I do not like to leave a lot of pieces setting out on the tracks. So, I acquire empty printer paper boxes (from church) and I just cut the bottom of the box down and then lay down a piece of foam in the bottom. After putting the cars in on their sides I lay another piece of foam on top. I cut the top of the box down also so that it can fit all the way down on the reduced bottom. The cars are protected and do not slide around in the box. Yeah, it’s not pretty but I can’t figure out how to make it any cheaper.
For individual cars, I prefer to use the boxes in which they came, although some here contain 2 or 4 cars each, since I buy quite a bit of “used” rolling stock, with no boxes…
For locomotives and passenger cars, I build my own boxes for storage or transportation, starting with produce boxes from the supermarket. These are sturdy corrugated cardboard, with a separate slip-on type lid, which increases the rigidity when being carried. Many have cutout hand-holds, too. The ones shown here contained pears (not Great Northern equipment), but slightly smaller ones for tomatoes work well, too. Banana boxes can also be used, but you’ll need to add a full-size inner bottom of similar cardboard, as there’s a fairly large opening in the bottom of those boxes:
Such boxes are free, and most stores will set aside useful ones if you ask nicely.
For storage in these boxes, I make trays sized-to-suit for whatever I wish to store. Stored items can be flat on their side, or upright, on their wheels, depending on the depth to which you fabricate the trays.
This one, for locomotives, consists of individual removeable boxes for each item, but they could also be done as integral parts of each tray:
The trays and removeable boxes (or dividers within each tray) are cut from large sheets of corrugated cardboard used to ship appliances
maxman No problem. You can still use this system. You just cut the sides of the box bottoms and tops a bit higher to accommodate the height of the upright cars. Actually, this would allow you to put more cars in each box. wdcrvr
I’m starting to explore this sort of thing instead of lugging bankers boxes full of retail boxes of rolling stock out with the module.
I know the gray foam is no good for physical contact with the model, so I need some manner of liner material. Is the thin sheet that they sell for wrapping dishes a good or bad type? There’s so many kinds of foam out there!
