Having delivered our modern style MMA/JNA ‘Ealnos’ box wagons, Revolution has not forgotten those modelling the 70s to the present day, and is delighted to confirm that we will now be offering the Redpath-Dorman-Long built PTA box wagons, and some of their steel carrying derivatives, as our next bogie wagon in N.
The PTAs were first introduced in 1972 to transport imported iron ore to steel works. Several batches were built to serve Redcar – Consett, Ravenscraig and Port Talbot – Llanwern carrying both iron ore and later limestone.
The wagons were built to be unloaded by ‘tippling’; that is, rotating them fully in a secure circular drum to empty them by gravity. To avoid the need for time-consuming, and therefore costly, uncoupling and coupling, the wagons were built with rotating couplings at one end. In early liveries this was designated by panels painted orange at the rotating end. The tippling process can be observed in this video albeit not in the UK.
Use on aggregates started in 1981 when the Consett batch were purchased by Procor and hired to ARC and Yeoman. Later in life wagon leasor VTG repainted some PTAs (now coded JUA) in light grey for a variety of aggregates which were eventually withdrawn in 2015.
In the early 1990s some redundant PTAs were converted to covered steel carriers and coded as JSAs.
When first converted the telescopic covers were made of plain sheet steel, however this was heavy and caused excessive wear on the sliding runners, giving them a tendency to jam.
Wagon lessor VTG acquired the fleet and replaced the steel covers with those made of a composite material that was lighter. This material was left unpainted, resulting in a changed appearance.
Revolution is expecting to offer models in both liveries.
In 2018 a number of the JSAs had their hoods removed to work as open coil carriers. Our model will cover all these variants.