WAGON REPORT
WASCOSA is making a major investment in the UK, providing finance for 570 new infrastructure and engineering wagons to be leased to Network Rail. Its current involvement is limited to a batch of 50 JNA-T/Ealnos box opens Nos. 81 70 5500 454-0 to 503-4, built in 2017 by Astra Rail,Droeta-Turnu Severin, Romania, and hired to GB Railfreight. Porterbrook Leasing is financing the construction of 100 new twin-platform FEA container flats for GB Railfreight. Greenbrier Europe will build them at its WagonySwidnica site in Poland. Delivery is due to begin midway through 2022. Unusual visitors to DB Cargo workshops at Stoke have been London Underground’s Chinese-built ballast wagons Nos. BW 001/002 and flat wagons Nos. FW 001/002. During the 1960s many privately owned wagon builders went out of business. A decade later there were two new entrants. First was the impressively named but short-lived Installation and Manufacturing Contractors Limited (IMC) of Ware, Hertfordshire. A new workshop was built at a site in Hartlepool during 1970. The first wagons to appear were a batch of 11 novel side discharge hoppers for the transportation of gravel from Havant to Drayton a distance of just five miles. Rail transport was mandated to keep the traffic off the roads around Chichester. Based on a French design they were constructed from Cor-Ten steel and owned by Francis Parker carrying Nos. FR 17001-011. Gross weight was 90 tonnes with a 67.3 tonne payload. Fabricated bogies of Y25C design were supplied by Societe Franco-Belge of Raismes, France. A larger order for PCA cement tanks was carried out in 1972/73 for Tunnel Cement, Nos. TC 8983-9018. Built with BSC Pedestal Suspension they were 51 tonnes gross weight. Based at Tring and later Ketton, trains ran to terminals in the London area and Southampton. All were stored by 1995. More prolific was Redpath Dorman Long, Middlesbrough. Between 1972-77, it built three fleets of PTA bogie tipplers to carry imported iron ore for its parent company the British Steel Corporation. They were similar in concept to North American ‘bathtub’ gondolas, the design being by Hawker Siddeley(Canada) Ltd. Based on Teesside were Nos. BSTE 26450-563, in South Wales Nos. BSSW 26564-677 and in Scotland Nos. BSRV 26678-26850. Axle Motion primary suspension bogies were fitted, allowing a gross weight of 102 tonnes. Rotary knuckle couplers were fitted to the outer wagons in each rake, allowing discharge to take place without uncoupling the wagons. Unfortunately, all of the steelworks for which they were built, Consett, Ravenscraig and Redcar, are closed.
The wagons have fared better than the steelworks. While many have been scrapped, more than a hundred remain in use, converted to JNA box opens or JSA steel coil carriers, Nos. VTG 4020-076/091-139.
Latest disposals have been: JGA bogie roadstone hoppers Nos. ERG 17308310/310-316/319/321-323; OBA ‘Bass’ opens Nos. 110300/548; OCA opens Nos. 112125/126/138/240/295;
HHA bogie coal hoppers Nos. 370413-417/419/420/431435/437/438/442-444/446; MEA/MFA box opens Nos. 391445/ 533/696; BDA/
BFA bogie bolster flats Nos. 950167/234/333/ 425/596/ 615/676/958; and YLA/YQA ‘Mullet/Parr’ railflats Nos. DC 967503/513/521/550/578/600/ 603/605/614/631/633/641/643.