With the recent announcement of Run Two of our highly acclaimed Class 66 locomotives, we've turned our attention to trains for them to pull.

First, we announced a second batch of our cutdown HYA wagons but we also wanted to add something brand new to the mix in the form of the FCA bulk container traffic family. 

Designed from the ground up, this is an all-new project that has never before been done in 'OO' gauge, so we're very excited to introduce this completely new tooling suite.

Prototype history

Glaring omissions from the range of wagons acquired by English Welsh & Scottish Railway (EWS) on its takeover of the BR freight companies in 1996 were general-purpose container flats. Freightliner had taken the vast majority of the fleet when it was spun off from BR that same year, leaving only a rump of ageing vehicles mostly used for containerised ‘binliner’ household waste traffic, as well as Railfreight Distribution’s newer but more specialised FIA ‘Multifret’ fleet for Channel Tunnel intermodal traffic.

The result was an order for 400 flats semi-permanently coupled as ‘twins’ that were constructed by Thrall Europa at the former Carriage & Wagon Works at York Holgate between April 2000 and January 2001 and numbered 610001-610400. Primarily aimed at bulk traffic, the 92.7-tonne GLW 60ft platforms were part of a £200 million five-year investment for just over 2,400 vehicles by Ed Burkhardt’s company in 1997 that also included two other container-carrying types. These were both more specialised towards maritime or Channel Tunnel use, the 100 FAA ‘well’ style wagons and 150 FKA low platform ‘Megafret’ derivatives.

Like many of the wagons constructed by Thrall, the FCAs were shod with the NACO ‘Swing Motion’ bogie. While this saved money, it limited the fleet to 60mph and forced a deck height of 1,023mm rather than the 980mm used for Freightliner’s Arbel Fauvet-built FSAs and FTAs. While this was acceptable for their bread and butter bulk flows, their use on maritime container trains, which were seeing an increasing number of 9’6” ‘high cube’ boxes, was restricted to major routes, or carrying standard height boxes only when mixed in with FAA and/or FKA.

In April 2000, the first two FCA pairs, Nos. 610001/2 and 610003/4 moved to Derby for approval and type testing. Their first deployment was to the London area, when over 120 vehicles were allocated to the Brentford to Calvert and Cricklewood to Forders ‘binliners’, while a further 30 examples were reported working out of Thrislington carrying lime to Margam in South Wales in the distinctive low-height Rail Freight Services containers.

The FCA would be associated with a range of other interesting duties over the next few years. They replaced two-axle FPAs on containerised coal traffic, were mixed in with wagonload vehicles in ‘Enterprise’ trains, and were partnered with brand new curtain-sided steel coil containers working out of South Wales. From the mid-2000s they turned heads on the East Coast Main Line when loaded with bright orange Rugby Cement 30ft ‘ISOVeyor’ flyash tanktainers and notably took over from KFAs to carry 20ft ammunition containers and other military supplies and equipment from a range of depots across the country. They have also been spotted carrying scrap carrying containers on the rear of the Outokumpu stainless steel trains between Tinsley and Immingham, while between 2011-6, they were used on various flows from Fiddlers Ferry and Drax carrying gypsum containers.

From 2010, new owner DB Schenker began a programme of uprating the brake equipment for 75mph running, recoding the modified wagons as FYA. Two years later, the operator addressed the other major compromise in the original design, replacing the 915mm diameter wheels with 826mm versions to reduce the overall deck height to accommodate ‘high cube’ containers within the standard Network Rail W10 loading gauge. The first recoded FXA to be converted, Nos. 610023/4, was also outshopped in DB traffic red, the only full repaint so far of these wagons. For others, the removal of the EWS branding and often replacement with a DB sticker is the norm. Finally, July 2015 saw the debut of the first FQA, a three-unit 180-ft long variant that used a converted ‘outer’ wagon with its buffers and drawgear replaced with a receptacle for a bar coupler.

One other interesting use for two pairs of former FCA ‘twins’ is partnering Network Rail Kirow ‘multi-tasker’ 1200UK crane No. 99 70 9319 013-7. These follow on from the 18 single-unit KFA variants of the FCA that have become the standard support wagons for the Kirow fleet operating with Balfour Beatty, Colas Rail, SB Rail and Volker Rail (ex-Grant Rail).

Bringing the story up to date, as well as a much greater use on intermodal traffic, more recently, examples have been fitted with ‘Super Tench’ mesh-sided modules recovered from scrapped FJAs, while others are equipped with three 20ft steel slab carriers or flat platforms for carrying concrete tunnel liner sections. They are still heavily associated with military trains and the ‘binliners’, although the Brentford and Northolt flows now run to Severnside, near Bristol, although they also ran to Scunthorpe in the mid 2010s. The FCAs are also used on the Knowsley-Wilton (Teesside) service carrying Merseyside’s domestic waste to the incinerators. While the Rugby flyash working has fallen by the wayside, similar ISOVeyor tanktainers are used between Drax Power Station (via Milford Sidings) and Appleford carrying low-carbon ash to Forterra’s plant at Newbury as a major ingredient in Thermalite Aircrete blocks.

 The Containers

The first run of the FCA includes two brand new container models that have never been tooled before in R-T-R plastic in any scale. The 20ft ‘binliner’ household waste container represents the later 8’6” high variant most commonly associated with the Northolt and Brentford flows, although it shares a family resemblance with boxes built for Avon County Council and Dagenham, as well as the Powderhall service in Scotland.

These containers replaced the ageing 8’ high variety that were phased out in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and have seen service from West London to the Bristol area and North Lincolnshire. Although the 8’ boxes wore large GLC lettering for the Greater London Council, the 8’6” variants were delivered in the same yellow but with West Waste branding (for the West London Waste Authority). In 2017, Suez-Sita took over the waste contract, quickly rebranding the containers, while since 2018 an increasing number of refurbished versions have been appearing in the company’s blue livery with large Suez logo.

The second all-new container covers an equally long-lived design. After years of relying on an eclectic range of British Rail air-braked vehicles, the early 1990s saw the Ministry of Defence containerise its stores and munitions traffic between depots within the UK and to overseas deployments. The existing wagon fleet was rationalised down to OCA, VAA and VGA types and these were supplemented by KFA container flats leased from Tiphook to carry the new Adamson-built 20ft boxes. These distinctive containers featured opening doors along the full length of three sides reducing the handling of sensitive loads. The format of the trains between the various MoD establishments remained basically the same until 2007 when the FCAs took over.

The Model

We are is proud to reveal the FCA family as the latest addition to its range of high fidelity 4mm/OO gauge wagons, complete with a range of appropriate containers that will open up many new opportunities for modellers looking to add interesting freight flows to their layouts. Designed from works drawings and multiple surveys, the first run sees the wagons combined with either 20ft West London ‘binliner’ or 20ft MoD ammunition containers, but can also be configured to carry a range of different-sized modules or boxes. Highlights of the design include the cast metal frame with plastic, wire and etched metal details, sprung buffers, highly flexible air pipes cast from rubber, the gorgeously rendered NACO bogies with rotating axle boxes, correct wheel profiles front and rear, full inner frame detail and brake shoes with rigging, and the numerous separately-added elements such as locking bars and operating equipment on the containers.

As you can see from our images, the containers and flats are fully tooled, with first samples having arrived for inspection before moving onto the decoration phase. You'll be able to see these Engineering Prototypes first-hand at the Great Electric Train Show in October.

The Accurascale Exclusive FCAs are anticipated to arrive in stock in Q4, 2025, so you've plenty of time to rake build using our Pay-monthly Partial.ly feature. Our FCA packs each feature two wagon flats and no less than six containers per pack!

They're priced at £129.99 per twin pack and we're operating their usual 10% off when you buy two packs or more, along with a new offer of 15% off when you buy 5 or more packs directly from our website. That means each wagon just costs £52.53 when you factor in loyalty points rewards and postage and packaging being free, representing excellent value!

The FCA's are only available directly so Pre-order yours today for no money down via the link below.

Pre-Order Your Accurascale Exclusive FCA/FYA Packs Here!