Model Spot – Accurascale JTA/ PTA iron ore/stone wagons

From ore to aggregates

Formerly used on South Wales iron ore trains, these wagons are now used to convey aggregates from the Mendip quarries.

Prompted by the release of the latest OO gauge model from Accurascale, Simon Bendall takes a look at the history of the bogie tippler wagons, which were

designed to carry iron ore before they moved on to transport aggregates.

Following the re-nationalisation of the UK’s steel industry in July 1967, the newly created behemoth of the British Steel Corporation was left with much plant that was outdated. After considerable assessment and planning, a £3bn ten-year investment programme was approved by the Government at the end of 1972. A cornerstone of this policy was to concentrate most steel production at or near coastal sites to allow for the bulk import of iron ore from the likes of Australia, Brazil, Canada, Sweden and what was then the Soviet Union.

To accommodate the ore carriers, purpose-built transfer terminals were constructed at Port Talbot in South Wales, Redcar and Immingham on the east coast and Hunterston on the Ayrshire coast. These respectively supplied steelworks at

Llanwern, Consett/South Bank, Scunthorpe and Ravenscraig, with British Rail charged with transferring the iron ore from the ports to the works. Considerable planning was undertaken by British Rail and British Steel in a joint study to see how the whole process could be as efficient as possible. This included studying similar activities in other countries, particularly Canada, as well as examining all aspects of wagon design, train pathing and route availability, given that axle loads of 25 tons were expected.

A bespoke box

The use of hopper wagons to carry the iron ore was ruled out early on due to the additional cost of constructing and maintaining such vehicles and their discharge equipment. Instead, a high capacity and sturdy bogie box wagon design was settled on, which could carry up to 76 tons of iron ore. This could also be relatively compact in size due to the density of the load.

Unloading at the steelworks was to be achieved using a rotary wagon tippler. This turned each wagon through 160 degrees and allowed gravity to do the rest. To deliver an efficient operation, the use of rotary couplings was specified, which would enable the train to remain coupled as each wagon was rotated in turn, while mechanical handling equipment moved the set through the discharge terminal with no locomotives attached.

The first circuit to go over to this new method was between Immingham and Scunthorpe, with BREL Shildon building 107 tippler wagons, coded PTA, in 1971/72. Numbered BSSC26000-106, they utilised fabricated FBT10 bogies, were rated for

60mph running and featured both inner and outer wagons. The outers, BSSC26095106, had conventional drawgear at one end and either a fixed or a rotary buckeye coupling at the other end. The inners had buckeyes at both ends, one being rotary and the other fixed.

These Type F buckeye couplings were manufactured by British Steel at its River Don works under licence from the Association of American Railroads (AAR). In practice, the wagons all had to be marshalled the same way round, with a rotary buckeye connecting to a non-rotary. To give easy visual identification the rotary end of each otherwise grey wagon was painted orange, a practice that was extended to all subsequent batches of PTAs throughout their time with British Steel.

Tweaked design

Subsequently, British Steel took the construction of all further PTAs in house, giving the order to its Middlesbroughbased subsidiary Redpath Dorman Long. The design of the wagons was also completely revised with a generally heavier construction and revamped strengthening rib arrangements. The bogies were changed as well, to British Steel’s own cast Axle Motion design, these again being built in house at the River Don site. The provision of inner and outer wagons remained unchanged, though, as did the maximum speed, this being higher than many other wagons at the time to aid the pathing of the ore trains amidst passenger services.

Between 1972 and 1974, Redpath Dorman Long turned out two further batches of PTAs: BSTE26450-563 for Teesside and BSSW26564-677 for use in South Wales. A final lot, BSRV26678850, was delivered in 1977/78 to work to Ravenscraig, initially from the docks at Glasgow General Terminus and then, from 1980, the newly completed import terminal at Hunterston. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the iron ore workings became famous for being amongst BR’s heaviest trains, the Llanwern sets requiring triple-headed Class 37s and then doubleheaded Class 56s to move them, while Type 3 lash-ups were also needed in Scotland and on Teesside.

Under British Steel’s ownership, the Ravenscraig batch were the only PTAs to see use on other traffic. This included moving coking coal from Rothesay Dock on the River Clyde, limestone from Hardendale Quarry at Shap and dolomite from Thrislington Quarry, south of Durham.

Aggregates carriers

With the closure of the steelworks at Consett in 1981, the Teesside PTAs found themselves out of work, and British Steel subsequently sold the entire batch to wagon leasing company Procor. These were put through an overhaul programme that included disabling the rotary function of the couplings, and they were then

hired out to Foster Yeoman and Amey Roadstone (ARC) to carry aggregates from the Somerset quarries to terminals across the south of England. Those hired to ARC were renumbered as PR26801-850, while the Yeoman examples retained their original numbers but had a new prefix added in the PR26452-563 range.

The start of the 1990s saw a reorganisation of the private owners’ wagons’ TOPS codes in order to separate bogie vehicles from the two-axle designs. This affected all batches of PTAs, with the outer wagons becoming JTA and the inners JUA. Meanwhile, the late 1980s had seen CAIB take over its rival Procor with a resulting change of leasing company logo on the Yeoman and ARC fleets. With the closure of Ravenscraig in 1992, some of its iron ore tipplers were sent to South Wales to augment the Llanwern fleet, where trains were now in the hands of the recently arrived Class 60s, although the majority were rebuilt into hooded steel carriers in the mid-1990s.

By early 1997, EWS was providing the motive power for the Port Talbot Llanwern iron ore workings, coming to an agreement with Mendip Rail to hire two Class 59s for these workings to allow Class 60s to be used elsewhere, an arrangement that was to continue for two years. Once these locos were recalled, EWS’ own Class 59/2s were deployed for part of 1999 until they too were moved elsewhere. Sadly, Llanwern would cease steel production in 2001, putting all of the Redpath Dorman Long JTA/JUAs out of their intended traffic. Ironically, the original BREL-built tipplers were still going strong on the Scunthorpe workings, as they are today.

The final years

By the turn of the century, the JTA/JUAs still in use with Mendip Rail were also in decline as new JNA box wagons arrived to replace them. During 2002, German wagon leasing company VTG acquired CAIB and also many of the redundant British Steel tipplers, allowing it to create a single mixed fleet for spot-hire work. Initially, many had their former logos crudely painted out, the British Steel examples especially receiving large areas of black paint before some were treated to a coat of VTG grey later in the decade.

Short-term contracts during this period included the conveyance of scrap and ballast, while further examples were converted into steel carriers in 2007/08. However, it was on aggregates traffic in the south east, particularly in and around London, that the remaining JTA/JUAs eked out their final years, working from the likes of Cliffe in Kent. Their last workings took place around 2016, by which time many were in a deplorable external condition, even the VTG grey ones. The last survivors were scrapped during 2020 after storage at Long Marston.

Awesome ores

Up to now the only ready-to-run model of the iron ore tipplers had its origins in the 1980s as part of the Lima range, the tooling subsequently coming under Hornby ownership in 2004. This model most closely depicts the original batch of PTAs built for the Immingham-Scunthorpe circuit, albeit with several dimensional and detail compromises; not that this stopped either manufacturer releasing it in ARC and Yeoman colours.

Happily, Accurascale has now stepped forward to give the Redpath Dorman Long batches the modern day treatment they deserve in OO gauge. As usual, the manufacturer has gone ‘big’ for the initial batch of models, producing no fewer than 45 individual wagons across nine packs of five and in five different liveries. The colour schemes include the attractive mid-blue and orange applied to the British Steel South Wales fleet from 1988, which was retained through to the closure of the blast furnaces at Llanwern in 2001. The plainer dark grey and orange livery of the Ravenscraig allocation is also covered.

The aggregates liveries are not ignored, with the second version of the Foster Yeoman scheme appearing, being light grey with a blue background to the company lettering. These models carry the original PTA TOPS code and logos of leasing company Procor, dating them to the mid to late 1980s, rather than the brandings of successor CAIB and amended JTA/JUA codes of the 1990s. The opposite is true of the ARC wagons. These have CAIB rather than Procor logos and the revised TOPS codes, making them most suited to the 1990s. Completing matters is the most recent livery of VTG grey, first seen in 2006 and lasting for a decade thereafter.

"Some PTAs were hired out to Foster Yeoman and Amey Roadstone (ARC) to carry aggregates from the Somerset

quarries to terminals across the south of England."

Inners and outers

Accurascale has pleasingly opted to mirror the real wagons by producing inner and outer variants, with the drawgear to match. Each outer has sprung buffers and a sprung self-centring coupling mechanism at one end featuring an NEM pocket and standard small tension lock coupling. The other end is supplied pre-fitted with a working buckeye coupling in a floor-mounted NEM pocket, along with pre-fitted brake pipes. The bufferbeam pipes for the outer end are included in the accessory bag along with working screw couplings. Meanwhile, the inner wagons are supplied with working buckeyes at both ends, thereby allowing a set of wagons to be coupled in as prototypical a way as possible.

Each of the five liveries is available as an outer pack containing two outer wagons and three inners to give a correctly formed five-wagon formation. To allow longer tenvehicle rakes to be formed, all liveries, bar the VTG grey scheme, are also available as a pack of five additional inners. These have buckeyes throughout and must be used with the corresponding outer set to give coupling compatibility with a loco.

A further feature of the outer packs is that one of the buffer-fitted wagons is equipped with a working flashing tail light. This is supplied already in place but requires a button battery to be installed, which is simply done by pushing out the false floor and slotting the battery between the electrical pick-ups. An on/off switch is provided beneath the wagon to control the tail light.

On the taper

Turning to the cosmetic aspects of the PTAs, the models correctly recreate the tapered design of the box body that helps with the discharge of the iron ore. The two different styles of reinforcing rib are also

faithfully reproduced, some following the body profile with others being vertical to connect with the underframe members. The horizontal end ribs are also well recreated, as are the corner strengthening posts.

The underframe of each wagon sports an air cylinder and brake distributor along with a fine array of brake pipes, while the Axle Motion bogies are well moulded with separate handbrake wheels. The majority of the wagons feature a nicely executed inspection ladder on one side, the exception being the VTG grey examples as it had been removed by this period. The finish of all the liveries is to a good standard, particularly the printing of the number and data panels. If there is a quibble, it would be with the slightly fuzzy edges to the blue panel on the Yeoman examples, although it is by no means an easy surface on which to print.

Unsurprisingly then, Accurascale has done it again, delivering another muchneeded wagon for the diesel and electric era and doing so in both style and volume. With a few other liveries still to come along, with branding variations on this initial batch, the wagons should keep the company busy for a while.

BELOW: Illustrating the EWS era of the Llanwern iron ore workings, 60008 Gypsum Queen II looks majestic in its unmolested Loadhaul colours as it powers along the down relief line at Coedkernew on September 3, 1999 with the 6B40 1155 Llanwern-Port Talbot empties. The Class 60s had only taken back full control of the workings the previous month following the departure of the EWS Class 59/2s. (Martin Loader)

LEFT: Hauling another load of iron ore from Port Talbot to Llanwern, 56040 Oystermouth leads 56031 Merehead through Cardiff Central on July 16, 1987. At this time, the South Wales PTAs still carried their original grey and orange livery, by now somewhat weatherbeaten, but repaints into the blue scheme would be underway the following year. (Simon Bendall Collection)

ABOVE: Only one Class 37 carried the Railfreight General markings in regular traffic, this being 37104. On August 17, 1988, the Type 3 was heading an unidentified sister at Stevenston as they powered inland with a Hunterston to Ravenscraig loaded iron ore working. The siding on the left gave access to an ICI chemical works. (Simon Bendall Collection)

RIGHT: The only Class 56 to receive Railfreight Petroleum emblems, 56036 is seen propelling its rake of ARC box wagons into Woking Yard for unloading in August 1989. The rake is made up of a number of PTAs, along with several of the similar PXA boxes from the PR27000-016 series built by Procor in 1986/87, the latter being discernible by their lack of tapering bodyside ribs. (Simon Bendall Collection)

BELOW: Making its way back to Westbury, 59002 Yeoman Enterprise approaches Reading in May 1992 with empties from Acton Yard. Making up the leading ten wagon portion of the train are six JTA/JUAs along with four of the Orenstein & Koppel JYA boxes, while just coming into view is a cut of JHA hoppers. (Simon Bendall Collection)

ABOVE: Like the Yeoman wagons, the Ravenscraig PTAs are depicted in 1980s condition and the rather nondescript British Steel grey livery. This is inner BSRV26749 showing the orange end that denoted the rotary coupling. ABOVE: Foster Yeoman outer PR26549 in the midto late- 1980s’ version of the livery with original TOPS code and Procor branding. This also shows the conventional drawgear end with tension lock coupling and pre-fitted tail -light. BELOW: The most modern of the liveries released is the VTG scheme as carried from 2006 onwards by wagons primarily used on south eastern aggregates traffic, this one being JUA inner VTG26613.

(Accurascale)

RIGHT: The Llanwern wagon certainly stands out from its sister tipplers in their varying shades of grey. BELOW: Due to a manufacturing issue, the ARC wagons only arrived in mid-December, preventing them from being reviewed alongside the others. However, this shot illustrates the 1990s look of the wagons with the CAIB logos.

ABOVE: The mid-blue and orange livery carried by the South Wales iron ore fleet throughout the 1990s is arguably the most attractive of the lot, recalling the days of triple grey locos thundering through Cardiff and Newport. The intermediate coupling arrangement is shown along with some of the high-quality printing.