Yesterday I took delivery of a fat envelope full of C-Rail Intermodal goodies, including painted and unpainted containers, as well as some excellent decal sets. The quality of the mouldings and detailing parts was very good, shown to especially good effect with the pre-painted Freightliner boxes, which are of a style suitable for the late 70s.

It was time to see how the containers sat on the modified flats! I'd added the cast attachment points to the flats in accordance with the S-Kits diagrams, carefully filing away recesses in the sides of the Hornby mouldings to accept the castings. Now, the smart thing would have been to use a Bachmann 20 foot container to set out these attachment points, but for some reason that never occurred to me, and it was only when I positioned the C-Rail boxes that I discovered that some of the castings - particularly the ones on the ends of the flats - needed a bit of adjustment. So it was out with the modelling knife, files, superglue and filler and the castings were relocated until they were in neat alignment with the container corners. It wasn't particularly difficult or time-consuming, but I could have saved myself all this bother at the outset, so why didn't I? Answers on a postcard, please...

In the meantime, I've started painting the blank boxes - luckily the decal sheets come with very good notes on decal placement and body colour - and I reckon they'll look great once weathered and in-place.

Can you mix Freightliner and deep-sea containers on the same train? I wasn't sure - lots of period photos seems to show only one or the other - but after scrutinising some images it seems that it's also possible to have a mixture of the types, and from a practical standpoint the Freightliner type (including the earlier style as done as Hornby) will help fill out the train quite nicely.

Cheers!