About two year ago, I started a three-parter series about designing and building an European railcar, more specifically the SDGGMRS type of trailer railcars, meant to transport trailers over rail. Due to reasons like “life”, “work” and “priorities”, I never got around finishing part three of that story. However, today I will finally do so.

First of all, a short recall of part one and part two. In part one we looked for a prototype and some drawings, in part two we actually tried to build and go through several iterations before finally settling for a design. In part three, we will look at the finished product (which has been finished for some time now, to be honest…), but also about the best part of this whole series: The inspiration it gave to others to build their own versions!

The Final Build

As promised two years ago, the final part of this three-parters would be known as The Bragging (also known as “Hey, I actually finished something again!”) and even though this isn’t the official title, I think the pictures below do pay hommage to this:

These pictures have been taken about two years ago now, and since then have run hunderds of very reliable rounds on the layouts I was part of. At first, I wanted to have them close-coupled with elastic bands, but due to reliability issues I in the end decided against this, so nowadays they are just hard-coupled on the Jacobs Bogies in the middle with two 2×2 turntables. Nowadays I have 3 sets, one of them empty, one with trailers, and one with three TEU containers.

Inspiring Others

As said, it turns out that since my initial posts, several of our readers got very excited and decided to give it a try themselves. Something I really like seeing (Just give credit where credit is due), this is exactly the reason why I made these posts to begin with!

Version 1: Dennis.P

First up is Dennis.P aka TECHNO, a German builder who not only was inspired, but also decided to add some extra details, and decided to change the way how the couplings work; where I had them directly connected to the trucks, has Dennis.P decided to attach them onto the frame itself.

Version 2: Pehter Abrahamsson

About a year ago, I was browsing online and by accident came across an event by SWEBRICK, the Swedish LUG. It turns out that Pehter Abrahamsson read the post as well, and decided to try to build the SDGRMRS for himself as well. Since he never saw the final product, he decided to change several little parts to create a subtle different model. As he said it himself: “I passed the train station when these wagons passed by and remembered seeing something simular in Lego earlier, after some digging I found your posts but no finished result. You saved me some trial and error 🙂 “

Version 3: Peter Schmid and Michael Katzmann

The third one is the newest. This one is build by German AFOLS Peter Schmid and Michael Katzmann, who run a Flickr account together. The nice part of their design is that they actually took their cues from both the models of Dennis.P and myself!

Conclusion

Two years later than planned, but I can finally say I finished this this threeparter. When I wrote the first part two years ago, I never in my wildest dreams had expected that anyone would actually try to copy or redesign my carriages. Yes, my intention was to inspire people to build their own goods waggons, but I had never expected that my own model would be perceived as such a beauty that they actually decided to copy it, instead of designing their own… But hey, everybody knows that copying is the most sincere form of flattery. So thank you all, I’m honored!