1:72 Wooden deck sheet German 50T Type SSYS Platformwagen

A wooden floor for the German fifty-ton flatcar

This accessory from T-Model replaces the plastic floor of the SSys type railway flatcar with a real wooden sheet cut to measure for 1:72 scale. The package consists of the walking surface itself; you need the flatcar model for it separately.

What the wood brings to the model

Injection-molded plastic can suggest the gaps between planks, but it never gives the real grain of the growth rings nor the way wood takes up stain. On the boards laid on the deck of a flatcar it is precisely this structure that a viewer sees first, because it is the largest horizontal surface of the whole model. The replacement also does away with mold marks and parting lines.

The real subject

Flatcars of the SSys series carried heavy loads on the German railways, armored vehicles among them. The fifty-ton version stood on four axles and its floor was made up of longitudinal planks anchored into a steel frame; on the sides there were folding stakes and lashing eyes. Cars of this kind appeared at stations across Central Europe, and their planks bore the marks of tracks, chains and oil from the engines of the vehicles being loaded.

Recommended procedure

• level the surface of the flatcar, so that the sheet does not rest on a protrusion anywhere
• glue the wood with PVA or cyanoacrylate glue in a thin layer
• create the tone with a stain or thinned oil paint, not with an opaque coat
• finally add dirt with pigments in the places where loading takes place