Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Going Postal

The "container question" continues. Whilst I'm not planning to make a collection like that on Nick Gurney's intermodal model, I think there may be more than one running on the KÖB, and I'm too cheap to get another kit, so I've been looking at tanktainers, swapbodies and roll-on containers and anything with flat sides until I resolve the "Corrugation issue"

And my goodness but there's a lot of possibilities. I may bore you with those another time, but this week I wasted my precious minutes creating a postal container based on those used by the Rhaetian Bahn. For those who aren't familiar with this company, it is a metre gauge line in Switzerland which doesn't seem to have heard that narrow gauge trains are old and can't carry big things. Amongst other heavy duty wagons including cement carriers, bogie tankers, roll-on container carriers and some very nice side-panel vans, they clearly have a contract with the Swiss postal service, and carry post in a fleet of swapbodies (If that’s the word for a lot of yellow boxes), which are designed to be accessible from road or rail. I first found these on the very comprehensive Schewizer Schmalspurbahn gallery where they are shown on well wagons, although I don’t know if this is for clearance or ease of access. The Railfan Europe site shows these and other similar swapbodies on normal four wheel wagons, which would be useful for my tiny layout.

Anyway, the drawing shows the general idea, please compare with the pictures of the real thing and let me know what you think. What would a UPS version look like?

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