As I work on refining my layout design I am starting to slowly (very slowly) aquire rolling stock. I see the intermodal containers on some of the online hobby resources I have seen mentioned here, what type or manufacturer of rolling stock do I need to start looking at? Do different containers only fit on certain manufacturers stock or are they standard?
Well, just like the real thing, those containers should fit in any well car. There are some exceptions, like you can't fit a 53' container in a 48' well - but this is true to the prototype also. So you should be able to pick up anything, as long as it isn't too long for your cars.
The old Concor containers, which snap onto a plastic frame which slides onto their 90' fat cars, are made wider than the real thing and will not fit into any well car. This probably applies to the old Arnold containers also, which these are apparently based. (Concor has just released a new run of these 90' flats with containers). The newer Concor containers, which come with their well cars, are made to scale and will fit in other brand well cars, whose well is long enough. To my knowledge all other brands of containers are made to scale and will fit any brand of well car, of course depending on length. Another concern is height. The Walther's corrugated side containers are taller than other brands (I believe these are correctly modeled extra height containers). If stacking two of these containers on the same well, you can have vertical clearance problems. If there are any bridges/tunnels on the route, they need to have at least scale 23' 6" clear between the rail head and the lowest point on the structure. The standard clearance on the 1:1 railroads is 23'. This is insufficient in N scale, not because of the containers, but because the model well cars ride higher than the real thing. The real railroads had the same problems when double stacks first came into use and have had to spend a lot of money to alter bridges and tunnels so that they can go on most mainlines.
