RNA Barrier Wagons

Until the mid 1990s railway operations required the use of barrier wagons when trains were carrying Dangerous Goods to give better protection to train crews and the goods themselves in the event of derailment or collision. Traditionally these barrier wagons would be drawn from whatever suitable wagons were available in the yard at the time that the train was assembled. However, with the sectorisation of British Rail in the run up to privatisation all assets and requirements had to be accounted for.

With this in mind, Railfreight Coal assembled a dedicated fleet of barrier wagons for use with nuclear flask traffic. It is likely that a number of the wagons that were involved had been in use for this very purpose for some time but were now formally assigned and converted for the role. A large number had their hopper bodies removed and a new floor added. Alongside this they gained a coat of the new Railfreight Sector livery complete with coal branding.

Other hoppers retained their bodywork but gained a repaint in the Sector livery while others were simply recoded as RNA while retaining their previous liveries.

HSA Scrap Wagons

The conversion of surplus HEA hoppers into HSA scrap wagons from about 1987 must have been one of the simplest conversions of a wagon.

The main aim of the conversion was to produce a flat bottomed wagon and to take the hoppers out of use as loading and unloading at scrap processors would be via mechanical grabs and magnets. This flat bottom was achieved in two ways, either a steel plate was welded across the bottoms of the hoppers at approximately under-frame height or a similar level of ballast was dropped into the wagon. The latter wagons can be identified by and increased tare weight that was patch painted on to the data panel.

This Train Simulator expansion is based on our previously released HEA hoppers which have been back through the works for updated materials and textures along with the fitting of some more recent developments which include:

• Intelligent tail lamps
• Variable infill method with tare weight patch
• Five different logo styles randomly applied with overrides
• Variable load planes randomly applied
• Body switching dependent on vehicle number with reference to end ladders on earlier vehicles
• Randomised textures of Railfreight red/grey versions

Weathered VCA Vans

A short while ago we showed you the full range of clean VCA vans that we will be including in our forthcoming Train Simulator 2016 expansion.

Today we present the work weary examples with patchy and faded paintwork and lettering. It's not a great leap to imagine the number of trips they have made from South Wales carrying products produced by the Metal Box company.

Clean VCA Vans

We first gave you a glimpse of the VCA vans as the header image for the September Update. Today we felt it was about time to let you have a look at the full set of clean vans. Naturally there will be some weathered examples along later.

In 1971 a new design of air braked long wheelbase van with two centrally mounted sliding doors appeared from Ashford works. These 125 wagons to lot 3764 were coded as COV CD and were painted Freight Brown with a large Double Arrow high on the left hand side. In the 2nd half of 1974, Shildon Works constructed a further 100 vans to lot 3832. It is these 2 lots of wagons that feature in this pack. After the change over to TOPS, these vans were coded as VCA, though the 2nd lot were incorrectly labelled as VBA when new (not featured in the pack). In time the first lot were repainted in Maroon livery with a boxed Double Arrow and Railfreight branding. Both lots later received Railfreight Flame Red & Grey livery.

VEA Vans: Work Worn and Dirty

It's always good fun to show the bright and shiny ex-works wagons. However, in the real world they soon found themselves in traffic and rapidly building a layer of dirt as the paint began to fade.

As with the majority of our expansion packs the VEA vans will feature both clean versions and the weathered ones featured in this post.