Looking for a little ID gang. I picked this car up in a lot of cars at the local auction house. There are no markings on it indication the builder. It is all brass constriuction and appears to hold some king on containers. 4 out of 5 are with the car. Who might be the manufacturer and what would it carry in the container??
Bottom View
I was thinking maybe containerized municipal refuse???
Thanks
Nothing mysterious about it at all. What you have is a Japan National Railways KoKi5000 class container car. Those green boxes are standard JNR containers. They could be filled with just about anything that wasn’t liquid and didn’t require refrigeration. The design is late 50s, at which time the JNR was moving the labor-intensive business of stuffing small loads into cars from freight houses to the customers’ properties (most of which could never be reached by rail in any event.)
Of course the car is 1:80 scale and over-gauge for the JNR’s 1067mm standard. Now you know what HOj looks like.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Karl:
Great find!
For what its worth, I think the car looks neat with the center container missing (assuming that the prototype didn’t have a floor to protect the bottom of the containers that is). Seeing the underside details through the beams is interesting.
Hopefully you can come up with a story to justify running foreign rolling stock on your layout.
Dave
Chuck,
I thought the stylized lettering embossed on the sides of the containers was JNR, but I didn’t mention it for fear of tainting the answers. Still not sure if I am going to keep it or eBay it.
Dave,
Yes, the non existant floor does make it neat to look at[;)].
Maybe I can letter it for my Private road, and crate a story around it??
Thanks guys!
Sure. A dealer in fragile Japanese products was having breakage problems when the items were removed from their original Japanese containers and put into standard international containers for their ride across the Pacific, so he decided to pay the extra cost of having the original containers shipped all the way to the US west coast, and then he provided this special rail car for the trip to his facility.
In this scenario, I would letter the car for his company, not the railroad’s.
It could be a plausible explaination…hmmmmmmmmmmmm…[^o)] Just trying to think up the exact Japanese product… [^o)]…gotta think on this one…
Sake
I like the way you think!! [;)]
Chuck
Chuck. I did a little more research and found prototype pictures!
With your info and a Google search I’ve leaned a lot about the car! Still not sure who built the model, but I’m sure a little more digging that too will turn up!
domo arigato my friend!
PRR had some container cars for small bulk products. Equipment supply today is international. Siemans, Bombadier, Kawaski, etc. If modeling 1980s and newer it could be a prototype being tested.
I like the way you think!!
[/quote]
I’ll drink to that. [B]
Actually, with that product the problem would be pilferage, not breakage…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with stand bars)
I was thinking brass model locomotives.
Chuck,
You have a PM [;)]