Articulated Joint on Model RR Container Cars


santafewillie said:
As I posted, I take the containers apart. Older ones are not glued and are easier. I noticed that newer ones from Walther's are glued and have to taken apart gently using an Exacto knife or a single-edge razor blade.
Here's an example of a 40' Athearn container using Walther's Goo to hold the 14¢ inside.
View attachment 158089
I use half as much on 20' containers.
View attachment 158090
On this one I added a piece of styrene down the center since the outer ribs are a little far apart.
View attachment 158091
Here's a Walther's 40' container that has no ribs on the floor.
View attachment 158092
Since on my layout, 53' domestic containers normally go on top, they get only 9¢. Keeps the loads from becoming too top-heavy.
View attachment 158093
I do two other things to all containers. I drill out the paint/plastic from the four small holes in the top, so they nest together more easily. And I use Woodland Scenics "Scenic Accents Glue" when reassembling. Keeps the bottoms from falling out when I rotate containers from one car to another. Since it is "repositionable" glue, it's easy to take them apart again if anything comes loose. That only happens if I used super glue to attach the pennies to begin with.
View attachment 158094

Things that I have observed on the trains coming out of the BNSF Alliance Intermodal Yard over the years. Most cars have 40' containers on the bottom. 20' containers go on the bottom. If stacked at all, they are only stacked on other 20' containers. They are never stacked on anything longer. Fully loaded 20' tanks normally have nothing stacked on top of them due to the weight of the liquid in them. They never stack a 40' container on top of a longer one, whether it be 45', 48', or 53'. 45 footers are pretty much obsolete any more. International containers are only 20' and 40'. Domestic containers can be any length, but the load bearing pillars are always 40' apart.
Hope that this helps.
Click to expand...
Just some trivia - few years back JB Hunt did a contract with BNSF and UP which stated that their containers were never under another companies containers, always on top. About 2 years ago, I started seeing JB's under another companies - Guess that they did not want to 'pay the freight' sorta speak.

Later
 
santafewillie said:
Things that I have observed on the trains coming out of the BNSF Alliance Intermodal Yard over the years. Most cars have 40' containers on the bottom. 20' containers go on the bottom. If stacked at all, they are only stacked on other 20' containers. They are never stacked on anything longer. Fully loaded 20' tanks normally have nothing stacked on top of them due to the weight of the liquid in them. They never stack a 40' container on top of a longer one, whether it be 45', 48', or 53'. 45 footers are pretty much obsolete any more. International containers are only 20' and 40'. Domestic containers can be any length, but the load bearing pillars are always 40' apart.
Hope that this helps.
Click to expand...

Looks like you've been paying attention, Willie!

Loaded tank containers cannot have anything loaded above them. If they are positioned with another container in a well, such as two 20 footers in a 40' well, the tank outlets must face the end of the car and not face the other container.

I would say 48' containers are obsolete as well as 45' domestic containers, but 45' marine containers are definitely not obsolete. They are out there but their numbers aren't anything like the 20' and 40' containers.

BNSF - and maybe other carriers as well - tries to keep the marine containers in the short well cars (anything with 48' and shorter wells) and the domestic containers in the long wells (53' and the rare 56' wells). Most of the time the domestic containers are found on Z and Q trains, along with reefer trailers, LTL and UPS, FedEx, et al. The marine containers are usually on S and Q trains. They can be mixed but they have definitely steered away from this practice. When they are loaded in the same car it's usually because the available well car did not have 53' wells.

Alliance yard is a little weird compared to other yards with intermodal facilities insofar as Alliance IMF has contract switch crews to break down and build the intermodal trains while the yard next door is operated by BNSF TY&E employees. Most other facilities do not have the contract crews in the mix. It's only worth mentioning because as someone who spent a lot of time working the merch yard we rarely switched intermodal cars. On occasion we would handle some switching duties and send the trains over to IMF to be loaded. The switch lists were made up according to the capacity of the cars with the 48' and smaller wells being known as BTSMALL (baretable, small) and the 53' and 56' wells as BTBIG (baretable, big). So that's as much effort as was put into switching the cars since they're all for the same trains. Switching regular mixed freight cars requires a bit more attention to detail!

The reason BNSF wants to keep domestic containers with BTBIG and marine containers with BTSMALL is the amount of train length that would be wasted if you were loading marine containers in 53' wells. That's especially true in this era of super long trains operating on territories built for much shorter trains. Besides that you'd be using up a 53' well that might be needed for a domestic container later. Obviously it does happen that marine containers are loaded in 53' wells, but when it happens it's usually because the correct car was not available or the loads are mixed between marine and domestic containers.

Another case where the containers can be mixed are baretable trains. BNSF uses it's rail network as a rolling storage for intermodal cars. Demand is anticipated and cars are moved where they are expected to be needed. When I started there baretables were always empty intermodal cars, but more frequently they can be loaded with empty containers and chassis. The distinction is that a baretable isn't a revenue move, not whether there are containers on the cars. It doesn't look any different to railfans than it does to those of us tasked with moving a "loaded" train with the fuel saving restrictions and low priority of a non-rev locomotive consist.
 
santafewillie said:
As I posted, I take the containers apart. Older ones are not glued and are easier. I noticed that newer ones from Walther's are glued and have to taken apart gently using an Exacto knife or a single-edge razor blade.
Here's an example of a 40' Athearn container using Walther's Goo to hold the 14¢ inside.
View attachment 158089
I use half as much on 20' containers.
View attachment 158090
On this one I added a piece of styrene down the center since the outer ribs are a little far apart.
View attachment 158091
Here's a Walther's 40' container that has no ribs on the floor.
View attachment 158092
Since on my layout, 53' domestic containers normally go on top, they get only 9¢. Keeps the loads from becoming too top-heavy.
View attachment 158093
I do two other things to all containers. I drill out the paint/plastic from the four small holes in the top, so they nest together more easily. And I use Woodland Scenics "Scenic Accents Glue" when reassembling. Keeps the bottoms from falling out when I rotate containers from one car to another. Since it is "repositionable" glue, it's easy to take them apart again if anything comes loose. That only happens if I used super glue to attach the pennies to begin with.
View attachment 158094

Things that I have observed on the trains coming out of the BNSF Alliance Intermodal Yard over the years. Most cars have 40' containers on the bottom. 20' containers go on the bottom. If stacked at all, they are only stacked on other 20' containers. They are never stacked on anything longer. Fully loaded 20' tanks normally have nothing stacked on top of them due to the weight of the liquid in them. They never stack a 40' container on top of a longer one, whether it be 45', 48', or 53'. 45 footers are pretty much obsolete any more. International containers are only 20' and 40'. Domestic containers can be any length, but the load bearing pillars are always 40' apart.
Hope that this helps.
Click to expand...
Weighting down rolling stock for pennies on the dollar?

Great idea. It would cost far more to buy weights than it does to just use the cash itself to start with. I like it!!! :p👍
 
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