The Little World

Someone, somewhere, built special cars to transport any unlikely thing you can imagine.

The LNER had fish vans, the NP had silk trains, and presumably the EFOM had tonky little coffee vans. You can buy potash cars that say ” Saskatchewan ” and presumably surprise your friends. I get my surprise looking a the odd wagons that haul bulk goods from steel mills and car plants.

This is a great place to begin a career of either scratch-building or crime as you are the mastermind tasked with transporting basketballs or refrigerated Nova Scotia whale meat to the export dock in BC. You need to think in terms of what was available in your railway’s time period and then decide to modify standard designs or make one up. You are also free to advertise your idea on the side of the vehicle for the benefit of the viewers.

I remember doing this in the days of my 1:22.5 narrow gauge by racking empty anaesthetic bottles and painting them as acid carriers. A keen 3-D printer could turn a standard wagon into anything they wanted, and make a rake of them easily.