Container Crane and Ship

The size of these things means there would likely be very few customers. But plenty of photos here, choose one to build. Keith

Make friends in the hobby. Visit Garratt photos for the big steam lovers.

Remember to leave enough room in layout design, too. A PanaMax container ship works out at about 1.95m long in 2mm/' - just a touch under

6'6". You're also going to need to budget for a /lot/ of containers :)

Coastal ships should be easier.

Thanks, this is very helpful!

Matt

That's why I'm thinking I'll do this in N gauge, I had budgeted 4ft x 1.5ft for the ship. In OO I would need to convert the loft!

Thanks,

Matt

Matt you have not read Andrew's post correctly. He is saying that in N Gauge i.e. near 2mm scale the ship will be 6'6"

Joe

How long would a mainline station platform be if it was built to true scale?

(kim)

Oh, that's a problem, however for those which are interested I found these people

They have a container ship which they say is N gauge and is 30" long I make that to be well under 3ft - I guess it's a model of smaller container ship... they also do a fantastic crane but at 200 dollars for the ship and another 200 for the crane, this is going to cost a fortune!! Anybody know of the same but cheaper!?

Matt

That's the problem with this hobby - never enough room!!

Or a very high back scene if you have the ship container-less....

As long as twelve 70ft coaches, about 11 ft (assuming scale coupling), there are stations that have longer platforms but most of those stations would need a considerable width which would almost rule out their modelling.

We don't model scale radius curves or scale length platforms so there is no reason why your ship should be scale length. Whatever looks good to you is near enough.

(kim)

Plasticard, KSmetals and a Google for some pictures of container ships ?....

Ok, Ok, I'll get my coat ! :~)

All is not lost - as well as the increasingly large deep-sea side of the container business there is also a local european network, often using the slightly larger non ISO containers designed for the euro-pallet. These are carried on much smaller ships and serve smaller coastal terminals as well as the larger container ports.

Bell Lines used to operate a nice little terminal, well suited for N Gauge, on the banks of the Tyne, although they then got taken over and I am not sure of the position there today.

These services use small feeder ships, in N you could get away with using a Shell Welder tanker kit as the basis, at the very least this can supply the all important hull, which is the most difficult part to model.

The deck is a separate moulding, lay it on a sheet of 30 thou and cut round it to get a replacement. On this add a frame 15-20mm high of 20 thou card, set in from the sides and ends by about 10mm. The sides of this frame should have a strip of 20x20 thou glued along the top edge and below this add vertical 10x20 thou strips at 5mm intervals. On top ad a sheet of 30 thou card. This top along with the 20x20 thou strips represents the folding hatch covers and should be scribed at either three point (representing two sets of two folding covers) or just once in the centre for the more moder two cover type, no containers should straddle these scribed lines.

The containers sit in guides on the hatch covers, add small triangles (cut from 2mm squares of 10 thou card cut diagonally) to the bottom corners of the bottom set of boxes.

The accomodation is a bit low but passable. A more modern accomodation block can be made fairly easily as they, and the modern funnels, tend to be flat sided rectangles these days. Sections cut from plastic OO laddering serves for the windows, glued on and with the centre painted gloss dark grey.

A radar mast is required in either case with aladder up the back and two platforms, one to the front with a scanner 12mm long made of a front of 10x20 thou with a strip of 10x10 thou along the centre of the rear face, soitting on a gearbox about 4mm long, 3mm wide and 3mm high, the top scanner should be made from a strip of 20x30 thou with

20x20 thou along the rear face and should be 10mm long, sitting on a similar gear box.

To cut the hull down to waterline use the supplied display stand and rest a hacksaw blade on a block of wood, selected to be the right height to get the waterline, run this round the hull to mark it and cut with a razor saw.

On the quay you need a crane to get the boxes ashore, these are big but easily made using Plastruct square and rectangular section tube and plastic card. They move along the quay on rails and the gantry hinges upwards out of the way during berting and unberthing ops.

You also need container handling gear on the quay, options include straddle carriers, mast lift trucks with top or side lift frames and reach stackers.

For more on this see . . .

Go to the Railway Company Goods Facilities index and look at Railway Company Goods Facilities - Container handling

You need siding at least three feet long for the container trains, so the whole thing can be perhaps four feet long by six inches deep, this can form a handy frontage to a fiddle yard. The 'sea' can be a removable strip of hardboard with rods that fit into holes in the side of the quay, that needs to be about three inches deep for this job.

You also may see small coasters delivering small numbers of containers to such a berth, the ShellWelder makes an excellent basis for the common 'two hatch Dutch coaster' (not allof which are Dutch, thats just where the design originated, there have been many British ships to that design). These ships, when fitted with folding hatches as described above, often have container fixing points on top of the hatches, although they also have their own cranes.

All of this will be written up for the docks section of the linside industries part of the above website, as soon as I get some time, but not this year I suspect.

HTH

Mike

^^^^ (Have aber.ac.uk's computer people found the caps lock key? I won't know it's you :-) )

There might be a card model available which could be used, or copied to an appropriate scale. There are lots of warships and liners available, but also freight ships. I've seen a Great Lakes ore ship, which can be built in a variety of lengths to suit the size of house you want to keep it in. Some are built up panel-by-panel, but that is probably taking things too far for a railway model!

OT, but this seems a good excuse to ask people wot might know. I know what the key feature of a Panamax ship is, I can guess at what a Suezmax ship might be for, but what is an Aframax, which I saw mentioned recently?

That'd be for a Panamax, which are pretty much the biggest of the beasts.

4' gives you roughly a 600' ship in N, which is good enough for an Atlantic-trade box boat or for an elegantly compressed Panamax (after all, track layouts get compressed, stations get compressed - I'd say it was legit to do a bit of scaling on the ship.

I still reckon the big financial impact might be all the containers needed.

In message , Andrew Robert Breen writes

Can't you do it in half-relief?

PS If you are going to build the accomodation block and/or cannot find a Shell Welder an alternative hull is the Revel light ship, which has a nice flare to the bows that would suit a modern small container ship. The back end is bulbous and should be cut away replaced with a flat plate of card to give it a more modern look. Just a thought.

Regards

Mike

Obviously it would be difficult to model a Panamax ship, but there are thousands of smaller container ships. Try doing a search for 1/144 scale ships, which is a scale commonly used by marine modellers.

Sylvan Scale Models has a 280' container ship coming out soon in 1/160 scale.

Cheers David

Thank you everyone who replied. It looks like I'm going to have to at least heavily customise or even scratch build, I was looking for the easy answer but I guess there's not much call for what I'm after!

Thanks for all the tips and if I ever get something looking half decent I'll let you all know how I did it.

Cheers

Matt