Revolution Trains is offering the iconic Rover ‘cube’ wagons, and their timber carrier conversions, as its next wagon in OO gauge, 1:76.2 scale.
CAD has been completed and first samples are expected early in the New Year.
100 large vans were built for Rover Cars by Rautaruukki of Finland in 1995 to convey preformed car parts and completed sub-assemblies securely between plants.
Coded KSA-A under TOPS, and nicknamed ‘Cube’ or ‘Talgo’ wagons , they incorporated full-length sliding covers as well as floors that could be raised and lowered to simplify unloading while optimising use of the restrictive British loading gauge.
They were turned out in a smart maroon and grey livery, with black Y25 bogies and designed to UIC ferry standards to allow them to be operated on continental Europe.
They travelled to Britain from Finland via the Channel Tunnel and were used between Swindon, Longbridge and other Rover plants. At first they were hauled by pairs of RfD Class 47s; after privatisation EWS class 66s, and occasionally 56s and 60s, were used.
In 2001 WH Malcolm acquired several KSAs for secure transportation of Anglo-Scottish freight on the WCML and two were repainted into Malcolm’s Logistics livery. Traction for these trains was provided by DRS (Class 66 or pairs of Class 37s) and the KSA wagons were marshalled together, often immediately behind the locomotive. The rest of the train usually comprised Megafret container wagons.
The wagons have also been used in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France for various commodities including bottled water.
In 2012 several redundant KSA wagons were acquired by the wagon leasing company NACCO and converted to timber carriers. The work involved removal of the sliding covers and the hydraulic floor mechanism, installation of 14 pairs of heavy duty stanchions and the removal of some end panels, and replacement with bars designed to stop logs sliding through.
The timber wagons are used with other van conversions including the IWA timber carrier wagons previously offered by Revolution Trains. They are used on trains to and from Chirk, most recently on a newly trialled traffic from Aberystwyth. You can see some sample consists of the Colas timber traffic with a mix of our IWA timber carriers and the forthcoming KSA timber carriers here.
The Revolution models will feature our usual refinements including numerous separately fitted detail parts, and have been designed with 26mm axles to allow simple conversion to P4/EM standards using proprietory wheelsets.
The couplers are fitted in kinematic NEM sockets and the models also feature soft-sprung buffers.
Models are being offered in original Rover livery as a van and NACCO red livery for the timber conversions, in a variety of different numbers, to allow convincing rakes to be modelled. All models will be supplied as twin packs with an early-bird pre-order price of £99.95 per twin pack from our website (our standard pre-order price will be £104.95 from 20 December 2022).
In addition, we are also offering exclusively through our growing retail network a twin pack of the attractive Malcolm Group KSA wagons. These wagons will only be available from our retailers and not direct from Revolution Trains and will have an MSRP of £124.95 for the twin pack – please contact your preferred Revolution Trains retailer to reserve/pre-order your Malcolm KSAs.
These models are in development now and first samples are expected early in the New Year, with the finished models expected to ship in Q3-4 2023.