Train Carrying Cassettes

Probably like most railways the H&MGR is not luck enough to be able to run trains directly into a garage or shed to store trains on sidings indoors between running sessions.  While stacking trains into cardboard boxes has sufficed for many year’s I stumbled on a quick and easy better solution for carrying our trains to and from our railway.  This won’t suit all sizes of rolling stock, but it is a start.

The solution, some rectangular uPVC downpipe left over from a job and a couple of mounting brackets.  Firstly I measured the length of our Binnie skip train and cut a length of the downpipe, then with care the top was sliced of the length of downpipe on my bench saw to make a U.  Now only one catch, with the top cut off the sides pinch in, so after sanding off the sharp cut edges, using some brute force I flexed the sides outward to bend things back square.  If you had a heat gun you could soften the corners and bend things back square with somewhat more precision.

The mounting brackets have lugs for screwing them to walls, so those get cut off so they too become U shaped (that will makes sense when you see a bracket).  I then glue one mounting bracket with the Marley solvent joint glue sold for joining their guttering and downpipes.  While the glue on end bracket is drying I cut short tapers on the sides at the other end and then the neat bit, I cut slots to fit over rails and the carry cassette now has it’s own re-railer built in.  The solvent glue dries quick so once the re-railer is cut I was able to roll in the train the carry cassette is being made for and mark up where to cut a slot for where to mount the second (removable) bracket.

There are two sizes of rectangular downpipe, the smaller 65mm downpipe fits my Binnie skips, the larger 100mm fits by NZR wagons, Accucraft L&B wagons and Hartland wagons.  The Binnie Skips and Accucraft wagons are snug fits into their respective carry cassettes but the NZR wagons and Hartland wagons are loose so need an extra piece 38mm or so wide glued down the middle of the base.  The extra piece is cut to width from the offcut resulting from cutting the top off and the width is of course just less than the back-to-back measurement of your wheels.

Anyway from the pictures it’s really pretty obvious what I’ve done and not needing all the above words!  The longest of the four carry cassettes I’ve made so far is 1.25m long and just fits width wise into my vehicle to go visiting.  I would suggest about 1.5m would be about the longest practical length to carry to and from the railway.  No doubt you could quite easily make something similar out of plywood or customwood and a few screws, but as my length of 65mm downpipe was a free offcut you can see the attraction.  At around NZ$50.00 for the length of larger 100mm downpipe and a few mounting brackets I was able to produce 3 carry cassettes in pretty quick time so I think that is still a real bargain.