Strange Wagons

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LOL...so in around there....are projects not finished? 😒
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New in 2022, Roco HO gauge, £200 / US$240 for the set of three:

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  • generic_truck_69420, Nigels, Super
Roco do make some beautiful wagons and loco's, albeit usually European Outline and HO gauge so not so interesting to the average UK modeller. But I love the attention to detail and build quality, I've got some (not of those) and passenger carriages in my collection as well as some of their diesel/electric loco's, the latter are incredibly smooth runners and again have stunning build quality. The only downside is the cost is usually on the higher side, but I guess you get what you pay for. One of my favourite ranges they used to have (not seen any around for a while) were the military themed flat wagons with tanks and other vehicle loads. Roco used to have a range of military models called 'minitanks' as well so the train wagons were a natural extension to that range.
Happily collecting things all my life... Big Grin
[-] The following 1 user Likes Nigels's post:
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I wonder if the yellow colour of some of the wagons pictures earlier in the thread has to do with the ownership by Lafarge of a large number of European cement companies?

Saying this because Blue Circle (formerly one of the biggest cement operations in the world) was bought by Lafarge, and were known for packaging their product in yellow sacks, as well as, you guessed it, yellow cement wagons or vans (see picture of a Hornby model representing an early example, and a Lima that resembles the OP wagons more closely) Smile

Since Lafarge bought the operations, the Blue Circle name does occasionally crop up, but mostly just on cement bags in the UK and occasionally on rail stock that hasn't been updated yet, but Lafarge seems to have kept the familiar yellow colour scheme as a connection to their past.

Here in the UK, cement by rail is still a very common cargo, and we even have a railway cement terminal in Central London, just outside St Pancras station in London, one of the last remaining goods terminals left in the central city, most being in the suburbs or edge of the city now.

My understanding is that it comes to the plant as powder in the tanker wagons, then gets transferred to powder silos, where it then sits until being dispensed directly into cement trucks along with water to create the final ready-mix product.

It's not the only site with a similar setup in the UK, and there used to be many more of them in smaller towns from when BR ran shorter 'wagonload' consists prior to their breakup, as near to where I was living until recently is a very small local cement terminal, built by Blue Circle's competitor RMC (and now run by RMC successor CEMEX) located alongside what was then my local railway to London.

This one had clearly been designed with wagonload trains in mind, as there was a semi-abandoned unloading bay with direct access to the railway (presumably a excavator or similar would have been used to unload the wagons into the silos, or possibly manual transfer of sacks of cement powder would have taken place), now used as a Network Rail (rail infrastructure owner in the UK) access point, accessed by driving through the cement terminal, which is still there, but now loaded and unloaded by road only.

Fun aside, cement & aggregate traffic was what led to the development of the ubiquitous Class 59 & 66 locomotives, which are by and large the most common freight diesels (especially the 66) in the UK, developed for Hanson Trust (now Hanson), another major player in the British cement industry.

The original Class 59s were the first order of locomotives for operation over the BR network by a private company since BR's formation (at the time, Hanson owned and provided the locos, while BR provided train crew), but it basically paved the way for private freight operation on BR, which would turn out to be the future of British railfreight anyway, with or without BR.

At one point, there were around 5 major British players in aggregates/cement, those being Blue Circle, Tarmac, Hanson Trust, Aggregate Industries and RMC, but of those, Blue Circle and Tarmac are now part of Lafarge, RMC became CEMEX, while Hanson and Aggregate Industries remained intact.

All of these either operated their own trains, or had contracts to move cement by rail with either BR, or the resultant freight operators post-BR, which remains the case today with their successors.

Anyways, enough TLBig GrinR, but hey, I guess a railway forum is a good place for railway pedantry, am I right?

Still, guess you guys now know what logos/colours to add for that authentic British cement wagon look if you make a Plarail version lol

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Been building Plarail worlds since 2001; Building when I can in 2023 Cool
[-] The following 2 users Like Plarail Man UK's post:
  • generic_truck_69420, Super
Hey Chris,

If you want a 'weird' wagon, how about this one as currently being worked on by Rails of Sheffield for OO gauge;

https://railsofsheffield.com/search?q=to...ce=Klaviyo
Happily collecting things all my life... Big Grin
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