The MGR air-braked coal hoppers was the largest fleet of air-braked wagons ever to be constructed by BR and it is hard to believe that the wagons have all but gone, initially in favour of high capacity coal hoppers such as the HYA (recently announced by Accurascale) and more recently, biomass wagons.
Built between 1964 and 1982, they have been subject to variations and conversions, creating a family of wagons that includes the CDA china clay covered hopper wagons, HFA wagons designed to run at higher speeds and other variations including canopied hopper wagons.
The family does not stop at the MGR: whilst worn out wagons were scrapped as coal traffic dwindled, around 1000 underframes were reused from 1997 by EWS to build box wagons for spoil and ballast, coded MHA, many of which remain in use today.
Triple wagon packs
The potential for developing a high-fidelity model of such an important wagon family is being grasped by Cavalex Models and by the time the announcement was made, the model had progressed to tooling with delivery pencilled in for the third quarter of 2021.
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Esta historia es de la edición November 2020 de Rail Express.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
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LNER puts remaining ‘91s' into warm store
The ongoing pandemic restrictions and major engineering works have resulted in the complete withdrawal of the last remaining ‘Electras’ from passenger service, although the plan is to resurrect them in the summer.
Mk.1 Restaurant-Buffet (RBR) cars
A SURPRISING number of Mk.1catering cars have survived to see service on the privatised railway, in private operator and charter trains. They may turn up on anything from an enthusiast special to higher-end dining trains and have been formed in trains as prestigious as the locomotive-hauledBlue Pullman’ set, the ‘Great Britain’ tours operated by West Coast Railways and the ‘Northern Belle’ tour train.
Powerscene
Our authoritative class-by-class review of newsworthy locomotive workings.
End for Freightliner Class 86/6s
The company’s Class 86/6 fleet down to just two examples as seven locos are stored.
Service reductions as Covid cases increase
An increase in Covid-19 cases in early January saw the governments in Ireland and Northern Ireland impose stricter lockdown measures that impacted on public transport.
East West Rail funding go-ahead
Although it was expected, £760 million of funding has now been confirmed to build the Western Section of the East West Railway scheme.
Travellers-Fare with Hornby's Mk.1 Restaurant-Buffet car
Hornby expands its range of retooled ‘OO’ gauge Mk.1 coaches with a brand new tooling for the Diagram 24 Restaurant-Buffet car (RB) and the Diagram 33 refurbished version (RBR). It models the vehicles in both original form, finished in BR maroon and Southern Region green, together with the RBR refurbished coaches. They remained in frontline service well into the 1990s, including Cross-Country workings.
Class 92 revolution
Despite its complex shape and high detail ratio compared to other modern six-axle locomotives, Revolution Trains chose the Class 92 to be its first 'N' gauge locomotive model.
Bottling it!
A dig into the Rail Express archive has revealed some rarely-seen photographs of the former rail-connected Express Dairy bottling plant in South West London, which today is the site of a large mosque.
1990s ‘N' gauge Class 950
Work on the ‘N’ gauge Class 950 Track Recording Unit project, a conversion based on a standard Graham Farish Class 150/1 model, is concluded by finishing the model in 1990s condition.
