Hi all,
Does anyone here have experience working with container ships? I'm wondering if there is some method or reason that there are small voids built into container stacks. It's not just on the end as in this picture but throughout the ship. Here's an example..



Thank you
Dave

Weight distribution... also in the pic shown there's a lifeboat launch between the stacks of containers.

He's talking about the roughly 2' gap between stacks above the first S in "Express." I read on another forum that this was clearance for hatches on deck in this area. For what it's worth...

If you look at the corners of a container, there are little boxes welded on to the corners, both top and bottom. There are holes in these boxes that mate with pins on the deck or on the transport frame. As the containers stack up, there are pins that are placed in the holes on top of one container that fit into the holes in the bottom of the next container. I think that there is a 'lock' on the pins that has to be manually set to hold the stack together. I'm guessing the gap is to allow access to the locks.

Now don't ask me how the dock worker reaches up to set the
locks....

The gap I identified is in fact to allow access to the containers stored in the ships hold. The containers are stacked over the hatches. In the case of Colombo Express and that class, there are 3 hatches on each section. The gap allows a section to be removed without disturbing the adjacent groupings to gain access to the hold. I found some pictures to support it and one of the guys on Finescale web site who has worked with them confirms it.

The containers are attached vertically and those blocks on the corners discussed earlier are ISO blocks. They are standardized so that they can be stacked vertically no matter whose container.

Containers are further supported at the base by braces. I think they call them twist on's or something to that effect. Should be no problem modeling in 1/700 scale, don't you think.

Thanks for the feedback guys.
Dave