Manufacturer
Wheels of Time
P.O. Box 846
Mountain View, CA 94042-0846
wheelsotime.com
Era: late 1960s to present
Road names: CSX/Seaboard shown, see website for available roadnames
Comments: If you’re into N scale and the modern era, you’ve recently had a lot of intermodal containers, maxi-stacks, and piggy-back flatcars to choose from. Now there’s an assembled, unpowered model available of a common loader/unloader found in intermodal yards across the country.
Wheels of Time has come out with an accurately detailed FWD-Wagner/Raygo-Wagner PC-90 Piggy Packer. Introduced in the late 1960s, the FWD –Wagner/Raygo-Wagner Piggy-Packer was one of the first commercially available side loaders for intermodal railcars. The Piggy Packer has a bottom pick for trailers and a spreader for containers.
Some later-production Piggy Packers that weren’t used for trailers had a container-only spreader. This detail is available from Wheels of Time as a separate N scale part for $15.89.
The vehicle has a 26 scale-foot wheelbase. Its front wheels are the correct 7 scale feet in diameter.
The molded detail on the plastic model is well-defined. Separate acetal plastic parts include handrails, exhaust stack, and the shafts on the boom.
The cab windows have clear glazing. The walkways along the cab have see-through tread.
The model has a movable boom and front picks. The rolling wheels feature vinyl tires.
The yellow paint on the body is smoothly applied. The accurate Raygo-Wagner “strongman logo” and CSX/Seaboard Systems logo is clearly printed on the sides of the body.
Some container models use magnets and steel to hold container stacks in place. The Piggy Packer has a hidden magnet in the lift to take advantage of this feature.
The Piggy Packer adds a realistic detail to an N scale intermodal yard. Wheels of Time has announced plans to produce an HO version.
