Double stack well cars

[zephyr1934]

I had these great looking containers built up to show off the container line decals, but no trains to run them on. I guess I need some well cars...

I wanted the containers to be large enough to look plausible while having the cars small enough that they could negotiate lego R40 curves. I figured the optimal container size of a 40 ft container at my scale would be about 5 wide, 25 long and 4.33 tall. I've come to like the smooth sides of the 1x6x5 panels so I went with 6x24x5.67 for 40 ft containers and 12 long for 20 ft containers. Of course that meant that I had to rebuild all of my 18 long containers.

I figured out how I wanted the cars to look. After going through several iterations I finally got all of the wheels to work on curves, and then took a few more iterations to make them look pretty. The end result wound up looking like this:

I really liked how the car number wound up looking when it crosses a rib. That is using a 1x1 tile and carefully aligning two stickers to make it all look like one continuous black stripe.

Here's the shared truck

A top view going around an R40 curve

And the well cars when empty

I ultimately want to be able to share this design to go with the Conral GP40's and round out my gateway design for AFOLs taking the first steps away from sets. I tried to make the cars out of common pieces but my first design (above, with ribbed sides) in yellow had four or five uncommon pieces. I wound up buying out all of the large lots, so much for a sharable design. So I took another approach with smooth sides,

This time all of the critical parts are currently in production, though a few are not quite common yet (2x2 curved slopes). There are also a couple of pieces on the inside that are no longer common in yellow (1x2x2 panels) so I'll probably change a portion of the interior to black. More on this design when I get the time to put it in a form I can share (ideally instructions, but failing that at least LDD).

With the larger containers I also needed larger decals for Evergreen, Hamburg Sud, Maersk and MSC (the ones shown for these four lines are larger than what I am currently offering for sale but feel free to drop me a PM if you find them of interest).

I ultimately built three 3 well cars and one 5 well car

The full gallery can be found here.

Questions, comments, suggestions, and general feedback are all welcome

[KlodsBrik]

These are gorgeous and look's very life like.

Now build some trains to get them running !

[pirzyk]

Nice! What is the overall height of the well + containers?

[v6TransAM]

Nice!

Awesome looking. Getting back in HO with the boy makes us do a little less Lego train, although both are expensive as @#!%@!$

[legoman666]

I'm going to steal your designs :) very well done.

[dr_spock]

They are a beauty. How well do the sides hold on to use?

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Lovely wagons and amazing containers!

Top notch work (as usual) my friend!

[ALCO]

Those are really great!

[Rotundus]

Very nicely done! Your shared bogie design is quite compact. I like that the rounded ends will cut down (eliminate) binding in the corners.

[garethjellis]

NICE !!

[Nemo57]

Perfectly. Excellent platform design. How true.

[lostdriveway]

Excellent work! Those smooth sides are just delicious!! Look forward to you releasing the plans!

I wonder how the pieces are in red for BN and SP?

[Railfan9]

Looks awesome!

[xboxtravis7992]

Wow! Makes me imagine a Z-train at knotch 8 on the throttle on the Lynndyl Subdivision... Great models evoke great memories!

[brickbuilder711]

They look great Benn!! Need to build some myself, I have a huge load of parts for FEC 53' containers coming in... need to have something to move them on.

[LoneBrickerSG]

Oh man, I love them.

[zephyr1934]

Thanks all for the kind words...

@KlodsBrick

Oh, these are the train to go with the Conrail GP40 locomotives. I've pulled them around R40 curves, R88 curves and R104 curves for several hours with the GP40's.

@pirzyk

The bottom of the containers ride about 1.5 bricks above the rail and each container is 6 bricks tall (layer of plates, 1x6x5 panels, layer of plates, layer of tiles), so the net is 13.5 bricks above the rail.

@v6TransAM

Yeah, tell me about it, my son is getting in to HO and I am amazed that a lot of what I build is cheaper in lego than the comparable car or locomotive is in HO.

@legoman666

You're going to have to move fast, before I just give them away... well... I guess I ain't fast but I do intend to give the basic design away.

@dr_spock

If you look closely at the ribbed side cars I used technic beams for the longitudinal strength. Those are then pinned in right below the technic plates that connect to the trucks, so those should have no problems. The smooth sided version uses bricks rather than technic (some of the technic beams were among the rare parts, as well as the tiles with studs on the edges). Each side at each end is held on by at least 3 studs, or 6 studs total on either end. My first thought was "gee, how weak?" but then I thought some more, a 2x8 technic beam with holes used to clip a truck in has at most 6 studs holding it in place. You just have to be careful when putting the containers in. If you are too aggressive you can pop the studs off on one side, but you just squeeze them back on once the container is in the well. So far no problems in operation. Functionally the two designs are effectively identical at the ends with the exception that all of the snot transitions are by studs in the smooth side (1x1 brick with stud) and most are with technic pins in the ribbed side (1x1 brick with hole).

@Rodundus

Those rounded ends are the very thing that required the greatest focus of the redesign iterations to make sure they were both as long as possible and still able to negotiate R40 curves. That and making sure there was sufficient room for the shared truck to turn, hence the hole visible on the inside of the ribbed sided design, and filled with a 1x2x2 panel in the smooth sided design. I was quite tickled when I was able to make the smooth transition from a 1x4 double curve slope to a 1x1 cheese brick, and even more tickled when I could continue that transition in to a 1x2 curved slope in the smooth sided version.

@lostdriveway

I had been thinking of other roads, but of course that would mean completely new artwork for the stickers. I do have a specific one in mind, but I first want to explore part availability before I go into any specific design.

[goody82]

It's interesting that the smooth sides were your alternate build to make the model use more common pieces. I think your alternate model with the smooth sides works better.

[Rotundus]

Hey Zephyr... I know where you can get a lot of Dark Blay for those SP cars...

[CrispyBassist]

These look really great! I like the mix of container sizes and types, it gives them some added realism. You should throw in a couple empties or single-stacked cars, since the railroads always get them full...

[zephyr1934]

@goody82

It is the tiles with studs on the side that are so uncommon these days, but it looks like the 4x6 might be in one of the new Star Wars sets. While some liberty has been taken with both builds, here's a side by side comparison of the prototype and model for each of the builds,

@Rotundus

Looking through http://www.rrpicturearchives.net it looks like all of the SP well cars were dark red.

@CrispyBassist

Oh, that's easy, just pull some out, grin. The least realistic thing about them is how clean the cars and containers are (grin some more)

[Cale]

Though I'm a steam era guy, I do have a weakness for modern intermodal. These look great. And even better when strung out in a long stack train. Great work.

Cale

[Duq]

Very American ;-) They look really well; you have a lot of nice shapes and angles going there. And I agree on the car number continuing over a rib, it's just one of those nice details.

The full 14 car set looks very impressive!

[mjotrainbrain]

Those are possibly the best looking well cars I have ever seen! What is their overall width? Do they fit in well with 6-wide locomotives?

[zephyr1934]

@mjotrainbrain

you are much too kind, but thank you. I am still impressed with this TCLTC well car design (from 2003 no less). My cars are one plate shy of 8 wide, but all of that is low so it is not as apparent when coupled with 6 wide locomotives. The containers are 6 wide and that helps. It also helps that I built the cars to go around R44 curves, so they do not look too long next to 6 wide locomotives.