Having delivered the modern style MMA/JNA ‘Ealnos’ box wagons, Revolution Trains have not forgotten those modelling the 70s to the present day, and are delighted to confirm that they will be offering the Redpath-Dorman-Long built PTA box wagons, and some of their steel carrying derivatives, as their next bogie wagon in N Gauge.
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.
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wagon leasor VTG repainted some PTAs (now coded JUA) in light grey for a variety of aggregates which were eventually withdrawn in 2015.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. In 2018 a number of the JSAs had their hoods removed to work as open coil carriers and the Revolution model will cover all these variants.
For more information visit the Revolution Trains website