Heavy Metal Announcement; JSA Steel Carriers!
Our latest OO gauge announcement are two new wagons in our rapidly growing range of OO rolling stock; the JSA hooded and open steel coil carriers!
Finding itself with a need for additional steel coil carriers at the same time as a sizeable number of its JTA+JUA (formerly PTA) iron ore tippler wagons became surplus to requirements, in 1996 British Steel commissioned Marcroft Engineering of Stoke-on-Trent to rebuild 56 examples to convey coils for its Strip Products division. These wagons were outshopped with three-stage telescopic hoods and were painted blue with white text, in keeping with the company’s famous branding.
The new fleet received the designation ‘JSA’ under the railway network’s Total Operations Processing System (TOPS). These wagons were chiefly utilised on dedicated steel traffic flows emanating from Llanwern and Port Talbot, and on Enterprise diagrams serving the likes of Scunthorpe and Sheerness. Services included Margam to Dee Marsh (for Shotton), Llanwern, Ebbw Vale, Round Oak and Wolverhampton Steel Terminal, the Newport tripper (between ADJ, East Usk, Newport Docks, Llanwern, etc), various Enterprise services in the 90s including Swansea-Newport ADJ, Newport ADJ-Warrington Arpley, Warrington Arpley-Tees Yard, Tees Yard-Middlesbrough Dawsons, Immingham-Doncaster Belmont/Margam, Sheerness-Mossend (from Arpley north) and others.
In the early 2000s, ownership of the wagons transferred to rolling stock leasing firm VTG. Around this time, the original flush-sided plate steel hoods began to be re-panelled with a rivetted aluminium skin, which bore the logo of the wagons’ new owners. Throughout this time, the wagons continued to serve the sites for which they had been built on the same services.
In 2018 Arlington Fleet Services began to refurbish several JSA wagons at the its Eastleigh workshops. As part of this process, the wagons have had their hoods removed and have entered traffic as open coil carriers on traffic flows from Margam to Llanwern and Corby. So far, over 50 of these wagons have been outshopped, with more currently being converted at Eastleigh.
We began design of these wagons alongside our PTA/JTA/JUA project earlier this year, with all three distinct wagons being tooled side by side. Tooling is now complete on the PTA/JTA/JUA, with the JSA tooling to be completed within the next two weeks.
Specification is as follows
- Pack of two Wagons, each with individual running number and decoration
- OO Gauge / 1:76.2 Scale Models
- NEM standard coupler pockets with ‘kinematic’ close coupling functionality
- NEM narrow tension lock couplers
- Sprung metal buffers
- Etched metal factory fitted detailing
- Extra fine factory fitted detail plastic parts
- Extra fine factory fitted Pipework
- Individual lettering, logos and codes from real wagons for authenticity
- BSC Axle Motion bogies
- Blackened RP25.110 profile wheelsets with 14.4mm back-to-back measurements, and 26mm over pinpoints
- Designed for easy conversion to EM and P4 gauges
Tooling for the wagons will allow us to represent the wagons in their as built British Steel Blue with plated steel sides, the rivetted aluminium skin when VTG assumed ownership, and the open coil carriers recently rebuilt by Arlington at Eastleigh, giving modellers a 23 year range of steel carrying wagons, some of which will continue in service for many years to come.
These distinctive wagons are available in a pack of two for £59.95, with three British Steel, three VTG hooded wagons and three open coil carrier packs on offer. Bundle deals will be available too. These wagons will also be available to order though our approved Accurascale stockists. Delivery will be in January 2020. Modellers can place their orders here: https://accurascale.co.uk/collections/jsa-coil-carrier