Strange Wagons

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That is a great overhead picture of the Lafarge Cement Works. So many of these Cement Cars. There must be something to the fact that the cement must be hauled in these type of containers and not just in huge hopper cars. My guess is that at a certain weight the cement will pack down on itself and harden. Anyone else know or have a different guess?

If it's anything like the British 'Presflo' and 'Prestwin' cement wagons, the cement is discharged as an air/powder mixture using compressed air, through a flexible hose at the bottom of the container, which has to have a roughly conical shaped base so that all the cement comes out. There's also a suggestion in the linked article that the cylindrical shape may be needed to give strength against decompression during unloading.

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Ah...so it can be shipped in large hopper cars and also tankers so I wonder why the spaceship bubble design? Could it the size of wherever the destination vats are as it seems like this way would be slower than just a large tanker or hopper being dumped. Or maybe this invention may its less hassle with clumps or more pressure.

working on it....

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AWESOME!!!

Very nice!Are you going to make these fit on a short truck-like chassis or on a longer coach chassis, as in the pictures they do look pretty long

The two-tank version is sized to fit directly onto a standard mail car / cattle wagon chassis that's had its central pillar trimmed off. The three-tank version is intended to fit directly onto a standard Annie/Clarabel chassis but the tanks are slightly smaller. All very much a work in progress at the moment. Other options in the pipeline.

I was just about to offer to have a go at designing one of these for you Chris, but I see you already done it

If you need test prints ping me

Meanwhile I did a quick search on eBay and it threw up some hornby wagons that are similar, I know they used to make a 2 chamber one but there's a few options out there it seems. There are even a couple of sellers offering just the superstructure as opposed to full wagons for a few quid, see below;

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364113468978?...R8CnnO64YQ

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185705883261?...R8jzse64YQ

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143326694041?...R9jL4e64YQ

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/322812571884?...R9jL4e64YQ

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Can't wait to see the finished project 👍

Hmm.  "Finished" and "project" are two words that don't often get used together around here!  Started again from scratch yesterday using higher resolution shape elements, i.e. curved surfaces with less obvious planar divisions.

I knew about the Prestwin wagons from Airfix, Dapol, Hornby, etc, but that French one is new to me, and the tanks do look rather similar in shape. Investigation into that one has opened up a whole new picture with the discovery of another amazing website wagons-europe.net which includes, among many others, this 3-tank French version: