Victorian Grain Board silos

The most common feature of Victorian rail yards, throughout the grain growing regions of the state are the tall concrete verticals. There are tow styles; the 'Geelong' type with a corrugated peaked roof, and the 'Williamstown' with flat roof (like the Norske silos at Horsham). These can be modeled quiet simply. To start, one needs two 55mm PVC pipes, and two 110mm pipes, at scale 97 feet (340mm), square cut if possible.
These are joined together by strips of thick plastic card, 12mm wide: these join the sections together (refer to diagram below. I obtained drawings from Vicgrain many years ago).

Concrete vertical under construction. Still to be painted and detailed, plus roof to be fitted.

An enlarged copy of this diagram can be downloaded from http://www2.nmit.vic.edu.au/~david/emrc2/resources/silos/Silo_Geelong_300dpi.gif. Beware, this is a very large file.

The roof was then constructed from plastic card. I used Evergreen Metal siding 4526, as this is close in appearance to corrugated iron.

C-Rail Intermodal HO scale containers

C-Rail Intermodal is a small UK manufacturer, that produces the most accurate model containers available. Up till recently, they have been only available in OO scale 1/76. Now announced, due to be released in early 2013 are; HO scale 20 and 40 foot reefer containers.

End view of HO scale 20' reefer and the detail of the reefer unit.

The only other reefer containers that have been available are from Athearn, but the 20' box has not been released by themselves, for many years.
During the 24 hour visit to Murray bridge in September, a PN/ Patrick train passed through, with over half the loading being Hamburg-Sud reefer units in 20' and 40' lengths.

First to be released is the Maersk Sealand box, but Arran Aird has indicated that the Hamburg-Sud livery is possible as he has the artwork, that only needs to be re-scaled to HO.

OO scale version of 40' Hamburg-Sud

Two addition containers now have been produced:.20'  Hanjin and  40' MOL.