Yes indeed.
We filed down some of the detail casting on the ends of the cars to increase the clearance.
We also found the pins on the common trucks fit quite tightly into the holes in the connecting car. We filed out the holes a tad.
Work better now but I’d not buy another set ever.
I have the ORER from my era, and I have found it not to be useful at all.
What do you use it for? What am I missing?
-Kevin
John,
Here’s a video of my Intermodal trains and Intermodal Yard on my layout. It’s not a large one, but works very well for my operating sessions.
Since this video was made, I now have 3 Intermodal trains that can be run. This means that you wont see the same two trains at every session.
My staging yards are on the lower level of the layout, so all trains originate from the lower level.
Enjoy!
Neal
7j43k,
“Thank you” for your snippy responses. Much “appreciated.” Truly a great way to welcome people into the hobby. Keep it up.
Snippy it was. I get tired of beginners (not you, of course) who don’t want to get books and learn about the subject. Perhaps I over-reacted in your case.
Anyway, when your books arrive, I think you’ll be very happy with all the useful info they contain.
I wasn’t trying to welcome you to the hobby. I was trying to give you sources of information to educate yourself on your chosen subject.
Welcome!
Ed
PS: My name’s not 7j43k. My name’s Ed (see immediately above). What’s yours?
Given your fully freelanced layout, that’s not a major surprise.
I use it to crosscheck pre and post 2008 data. For instance, the Bessemer & Lake Erie used to have 3-bay covered hoppers it used for a single online lime producer and they were in service well past 2000. Accurail even produced them, don’t have to decal my own. Photos of them are very rare. In fact, the only one on RR Picture Archive is from 2010, and the information says that it is in company service. This car is not mentioned in the 2008 listing for B&LE, meaning that it is not available for interchange. While I model the Pittsburgh area and it would be common for B&LE hoppers and gons to appear on the line I do model, this covered hopper could not.
Likewise, I use it for cross referencing whether or not certain cars had moved into lease fleets for patch jobs.
If a freelancer was thinking about copying a New Haven 50’ trailer flat and lettering it for his own road, he could:
get some dimensions
get the size of the series, to see how “significant” they were
use numbers from that series to help him find photos of similar cars
see if that New Haven car was running in his time period, perhaps making it more appropriate–or less
very occasionally, get some special loading instructions
Ed
I’m in Volusia County and am actually closer to DeLand than I am to Oviedo. Unfortunately I already had plans out-of-town so won’t be able to attend the Golden Spike show.
OK, thank you for responding.
I will be at the Golden Spike show, and am very excited about a train show… again… finally.
Back to our regularly scheduled topic.
-Kevin
You can just take the intermodal ball, run with it, and adapt it to you needs. In my case, intermodal helps the narrowgauge to survive and remain relevant. We can handle up to 40’ vans and containers.
It makes sense for the NG to focus on 20’ containers, due to rolling stock limitations and the limits of the road infrastructure once off the rails.
If you go to https://www.krafttrains.com/Paper_Struchers_for_Trains/HO/Containers-(HO)/HO_Containers.htm you can download 1072 free containers that you print out on 110 pound card stock paper. Just print the ones you want, cut them out fold and glue. One trick that I have found is to lightly score along the lines before folding. This makes it easier to get nice square corners.
Caldreamer, Thank you very much! This is very cool. Have you stacked the cardboard containers? And, would it be good to take or glue small weights inside to give them a little bit of heft? Thank you for your answers! John
Great video, Neal! Thank you. It is great to see these cars in action. John
Yes to both questions. What I do is to permenently glue enough weight to the bottom of the container so that when stacked and put in a car the car weight equals the NMRA standard. I mark the bottom of the containers that contain weight and use unweighted ones on top. I use rubber cement to attach the top container to the lower one(s). You can detach the top container rub off the rubber cement. There is no damage to the conttainer and you will not even know that it had any glue on it.
Bear in mind the intended or modelled traffic of your railroad.
International container traffic is almost exclusively 20’ and 40’. Something like 90%.
North American internal traffic uses 53’ pretty commonly but the other less common sizes are also seen:45’, 48’ and even 56’. Edit: apparently there are no 56’ containers, the cars were designed to carry 28’ containers.
In Western Canada we see almost always 40’ stacked and a few 20’ stacked on their way through to somewhere from the Port of Vancouver. Further East you’d see more 53’ internal traffic only, and so on. For example, our CPR owns only 20’ and 40’ international shipping containers and 53’ internal market containers (including mechanical reefer equipped 53’). While other sizes are shipped by CP they only run the three sizes themselves.
Instead of just weighting the models you could use steel weights and small magnets. Kato includes the magnet system with their containers. Every maker should. Nothing more annoying than that unrestrained rattle of stacked hollow plastic model containers (well, other than the rattle of derailing plastic). Of course since you have no real shippers or customers you can just glue stacked containers and nobody needs to know they don’t come apart. Containers are commonly stacked until an end user needs to unload or load one.
Rubber cement is almost a perfect temporary adhesive.
Good tip.
-Kevin
That’s probably closer to 97%, with the rest being 45’. Also, keep in mind that there are both standard height 40’s (8’-6") and hi-cube 40’s (9’-6").
There are no 56’ containers. There are 56’ well cars.
I’ve gone through some photos of domestic intermodal trains. Containers are all 53’, except for perhaps 1 or 2 48’s.
40’s and the occasional 45’ show in these trains sometimes. I’m not sure whether they’re in domestic service with the 53’s, or international service, and filling out the train.
One of my faves (in domestic service) was a 5-unit well car with 40’ wells. In the lower position, it was all 40’ (of course). In the upper, it was 53-40-53-40-53. Keep in mind that most of the rest of the train was either 53’ containers in 53’ wells, or trailers on spine cars. A “domestic” train.
Ed
True, BUT you have to purchase the Kato containers. The paper containers are free. I use them stacked in my intermodal yard as well as on my well cars. Also, I always weigh my 20 ft containers since they are always on the bottom.
According the UMLER (Uniform Machine Language Equipment Register) data specifications for containers. Just about any combination of containers can be used. See the following link and go intermodal flat. Go to stackability and you will see the loading types. https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/UmlerDataSpecs.pdf
Caldreamer, Thank you again, very much, for the answers. Using weights sounds good, and I will follow the suggestions for how to do it that you included. Do you recommend a certain kind of weight? And, do you have a suggestion as to where I could buy those weights? I am lining up cardboard containers to buy at https://cardkitmodels.com/. It is great that, with cardboard, you can get the latest containers, like Amazon. Thanks again! John
John:
You can purchase lead weights at your local hobby shop, or as I do go to your nearest Walmart and get an exceptional variety of fishing weights very inexpensively. I also get used car wheel weights which I get from my local tire shop. I cut them down and use them as well.