MOC Well Car with Intermodal Shipping Containers w/.lxf

[sed6]

This ones been a long time coming. I started the design months ago and while the well cars themselves came together quickly I really struggled with the shipping containers.

A flight of three well cars typically carry 53 foot containers while 40 footers are carried on a flight of five wellcars. However since I didn't want cars that long nor containers that long my three cars carry my version of the 40 footers. The spacing between the cars is just enough to allow them to navigate standard R40 curve track without binding. A nice feature about the cars is the base can be adjusted up or down 4 studs. I can lower them for layouts with clearance restrictions or maybe raise them up if I run a single container and don't want it to look too buried in the wellcar. In the pictures below you can see what I mean, I have the base set to second from bottom, it could got up two or down one stud from it's current position.

My containers are 24 studs long, 6 studs wide and 6 bricks high. I felt those measurements gave good proportions without being to long. My real challenge with them was what to make the sides from. I considered the 1x2 brick with grove prevalent in the Maserk containers but they are hard to find or expensive or not available in enough colors. I really wanted something to simulate the texture of a shipping container and finally found the 1x1x5 brick. I gave each one a slight turn and voila, instant texture that very closely simulates a real container. The fractional added length and width caused by rotating the bricks make them a snug fit in the wellcars but they do fit fine.

Here's some pics and my .lxf file is linked below for anyone who wants to copy, modify or build their own. Hope you like!

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://bricksafe.com/pages/sed6/well-car

Edited June 21, 2018 by sed6
cnat spele

[Man with a hat]

Nice! And using a 1x1x5 brick slightly angled is absolutely brilliant! 

No real doors though?

[Capparezza]

Interesting solution with those 6 normal studs + 4 halfpins... how is the long-time stability? Holding up well, especially through curves and switches?

[sed6]

2 hours ago, Man with a hat said:

Nice! And using a 1x1x5 brick slightly angled is absolutely brilliant! 

No real doors though?

Thanks! No doors, not a fan, too difficult to implement. Plus TLG moved away from doors on their newest trains so I figure I can too!

1 hour ago, Capparezza said:

Interesting solution with those 6 normal studs + 4 halfpins... how is the long-time stability? Holding up well, especially through curves and switches?

Thank you. Unsure, I literally finished just minutes before my initial post. 20 minutes of additional play last night revealed no problems though. I suspect they will hold up just fine.

Edit to add: your question intrigued my so I just took this pic. You can see the sides grip the ends very well. Those containers are heavy and the two stacked together act like a lever trying to pry the sides apart but the still stay in place!

 

Edited June 21, 2018 by sed6

[sed6]

Here's a quick video, they navigate curves and switches quite well. 

And here's some pics that served as inspiration for this build.

I also want to give a shout out to @zephyr1934 for his great well car thread from which I took some inspiration also.

 

Edited June 21, 2018 by sed6

[Capparezza]

2 hours ago, sed6 said:

Edit to add: your question intrigued my so I just took this pic. You can see the sides grip the ends very well. Those containers are heavy and the two stacked together act like a lever trying to pry the sides apart but the still stay in place!

Haha, nice! That is looking good. If that works out well, I don't see any problem when running on the tracks.

[theevilcrayonbox]

Oh my gosh! I absolutely love it. I’ve been trying to work with making my own intermodal with little success and inexperience. I’m new to the MOC scene of my train stuff. I definitely want to use these in my own layouts when I get to set them up! If I may, how expensive was it to get the bricks to build this? 

[sed6]

5 hours ago, theevilcrayonbox said:

Oh my gosh! I absolutely love it. I’ve been trying to work with making my own intermodal with little success and inexperience. I’m new to the MOC scene of my train stuff. I definitely want to use these in my own layouts when I get to set them up! If I may, how expensive was it to get the bricks to build this? 

Thanks for the compliment! Feel free to use or modify my design. Parts for the cars and containers ran $140 plus shipping from 5 sellers, three U.S. two international. The three cars can be made for about $65 by themselves. Shipping containers are expensive to make!

Edited June 21, 2018 by sed6

[theevilcrayonbox]

Thank you again. I dream of having a train yard with lots and lots of rolling stock. These intermodal are icing on the cake with the 10016 MOC found elsewhere on Eurobricks. Do you plan to add stickers such as TTX? 

 

Edit: 

have you considered modified brick, log? https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=30136#T=C

 

itll have a similar texture. 

Edited June 21, 2018 by theevilcrayonbox
Added suggestion.

[sed6]

2 hours ago, theevilcrayonbox said:

Thank you again. I dream of having a train yard with lots and lots of rolling stock. These intermodal are icing on the cake with the 10016 MOC found elsewhere on Eurobricks. Do you plan to add stickers such as TTX? 

 

Edit: 

have you considered modified brick, log? https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=30136#T=C

 

itll have a similar texture. 

You're very welcome. I'm undecided on stickers. @zephyr1934 does offer them for sale. I did consider that brick, not enough color selection and ultimately not as good looking as the 1x1x5. 

I did my own tanker MOC you might be interested in.

 

[Kintobor]

Those are pretty slick! The shipping containers are especially neat. I like what you did to get the surface of the containers the way they are.

 

[sed6]

8 hours ago, Kintobor said:

Those are pretty slick! The shipping containers are especially neat. I like what you did to get the surface of the containers the way they are.

 

Thank you. They build very easily. Once you get the first one at the angle you want all the rest just line up and fall into place. They went together faster and easier than if I'd tried to make them straight!

[zephyr1934]

Looking good and impressive to see these long cars handle the tight curves of your layout. I was going to ask you how well they handle on curves, but your video gave some pretty impressive clarity to that question already. With my well cars I had problems with the wheels running in to my underframe, but I have end walls in my wells and you were able to make it work without them (I tend to overdesign, and the end walls provide an extra 2-3 studs for attachment). My solution was to use panels to give room for the trucks to turn behind the end walls.

 

 

On 6/21/2018 at 6:39 AM, Capparezza said:

Interesting solution with those 6 normal studs + 4 halfpins... how is the long-time stability? Holding up well, especially through curves and switches?

That's a great trick, but it adds something like a quarter plate in width. In your case that probably works well with the twisted bricks of the containers that make them slightly wider than 6 wide as well. In my build I used two 1x2 x 1x2 up brackets held together by a 2x2 tile (you can barely see it in this photo)

 

On 6/21/2018 at 6:27 PM, sed6 said:

You're very welcome. I'm undecided on stickers. @zephyr1934 does offer them for sale. I did consider that brick, not enough color selection and ultimately not as good looking as the 1x1x5. 

I did my own tanker MOC you might be interested in.

 

The ribbing effect looks good, but it is also a design trade off, one would be hard pressed to do the ribs AND stickers. If one wanted the best of both worlds I suppose you could go the route of the Maersk containers and have a flat section for the stickers and the rest be ribbed. On the other hand, the price comes down a lot if you use the normal 1x6x5 panels, but the 6x plates and all the tiles for the roof are hard to avoid. These are all design trade offs, there is no single best answer.

 

If you are interested I could probably adjust the stickers from this design to fit your build, just send me a PM. Be warned though, that I am on holiday, so it would be weeks before I could print them.

[sed6]

1 hour ago, zephyr1934 said:

The ribbing effect looks good, but it is also a design trade off, one would be hard pressed to do the ribs AND stickers. If one wanted the best of both worlds I suppose you could go the route of the Maersk containers and have a flat section for the stickers and the rest be ribbed. On the other hand, the price comes down a lot if you use the normal 1x6x5 panels, but the 6x plates and all the tiles for the roof are hard to avoid. These are all design trade offs, there is no single best answer.

 

If you are interested I could probably adjust the stickers from this design to fit your build, just send me a PM. Be warned though, that I am on holiday, so it would be weeks before I could print them.

Thank you for the kind words, and my original inspiration! I agree that there is always some trade offs in designing these containers, or almost anything for that matter. 

I doubt I'll do stickers on the containers. It's not possible to transition from angled to flat in just one brick. Instead it requires slowly putting in less and less angle until its flat, probably 4-5-6 bricks, so the texture gradually washes out and probably wouldn't look good. I am considering some stickers for the cars if you are willing to print some for me. I'll send you a message. No rush, I'm on holiday too!

Edited June 25, 2018 by sed6

[zephyr1934]

On 6/25/2018 at 7:46 PM, sed6 said:

I am considering some stickers for the cars if you are willing to print some for me. I'll send you a message. No rush, I'm on holiday too!

Yes, that's what I meant, and since the .xlf is out there I'm open to selling them in the wild too, so if there are others, feel free to PM as well. In any event it will be many weeks before I can do a print run. See you in PM land...

[AE bricks]

I love the design of the container wagons, would save me quite some buffer magnets and pin plates.