Revolution Trains is teaming up with Scotland-based retailer Rainbow Railways to offer TUA caustic soda tank wagons in 00 gauge, 4mm scale.
CAD has been completed and the model will be going into tooling early next month.
28 of these tankers to design code TU013A were built by Standard Wagon of Heywood in 1977 for caustic soda traffic from ICI’s Mond works in Cheshire. They were owned by leasing company TRL and numbered TRL 70700-70727.
They featured pedestal suspension, a lagged barrel to a slightly narrower diameter than tankers intended for petroleum traffic, a short catwalk with ladders on each side and distinctive over-ride protection barriers at each end.
When built they were painted in ICI’s livery of dark blue-grey barrel with bright orange solebars and black underframes. They were used for deliveries of caustic soda liquor (sodium hydroxide) from ICI’s plant at Mond in Cheshire to destinations including Corkickle, Burn Naze, Stevenson in Scotland and Haverton Hill in north East England.
From the mid 1980s ICI’s requirements for the wagons fell and they started being taken on by Pan Ocean (in the original livery with the ICI logo painted over) for its trains from Ellesmere Port and by ATO from Immingham to destinations in south-west, north-west and north-east England and Scotland, often as short cuts of wagons in Speedlink services.
In 1988 some of the wagons began to see use in china clay slurry traffic. Twelve assigned to ECC International were repainted into its attractive blue livery for use between Burngullow (in Cornwall) and Aberdeen.
This map gives an overview of the use of these wagons. They are thought to have gone out of use in the early 2000s.
The models will feature NEM couplers, sprung buffers, separate plastic, wire and photo etched parts and will be weighted for smooth running.
There were some minor detail variations between the wagons, at different times, and these have been catered for in the design. Two different designs of manlid have been recorded, and in later years some wagons ran without the solebar placards.
In the first run nine different numbers will be available in ICI orignal livery (with a split between TRL and TIGER branding), four each will be available in ATO and ECC International , and two in unbranded original livery.
These models are being produced exclusively with Rainbow Railways of Linlithgow in West Lothian, and are not available to pre-order from Revolution Trains. There’ll be an earlybird pre-order price of £35, rising to £40 in due course. For more information, or to secure your order, see here.