Factfile: FGA/FFA

As part of BR’S drive towards modernisation, a small batch of prototype container wagons was built at Shildon Works in 1964. Coupled in four-car sets, each vehicle was capable of handling a pair of Br-designed 20ft containers. The design was duly adapted to create longer vehicles with a greater payload (a total loading area of 60ft per car) and sets were coupled, semi-permanently, into five-car sets, with buffers and conventional draw gear at the outer ends only. Coded as FGA (outer) and FFA (inner) under the TOPS system, assembly continued until 1976 with several thousand examples eventually entering service. As well as compatibility with BR’S own design of ‘boxes’, the wagons were adapted to cater for the international standard (ISO) shipping containers that came on stream in the 1970s, of varying lengths. A number of FGA/FFA vehicles lasted in service into the early 2000s, employed by Freightliner and EWS (with a few receiving privatisation liveries), although many of the five-car sets had been reduced to four-car units in later BR days.