Now available to pre-order at Rails of Sheffield are the newly tooled ranges of N Gauge PTA/JTA/JUA Iron Ore/ Aggregate Box Wagons and JSA Steel Coil Carriers from Revolution Trains!

A wide range of these modern era freight carriers are now available to pre-order in a selection of colourful liveries - as used by Foster Yeoman, ARC, British Steel and VTG. These all feature the high levels of detail and accuracy that you have come to expect from Revolution's N Gauge models. 

These are to be produced in limited quantities and an order book deadline has been set for Friday 19th December 2025 - so we highly recommend you place your pre-orders ASAP to ensure they are guaranteed.

Redpath-Dorman-Long built PTA box wagons for iron ore traffic in the 1970s. Iron ore is heavy, and the wagons needed to be robust. They were heavily ribbed and featured ESC axle-motion bogies with hefty cast frames for strength. In British Steel use they transported ore to blast furnaces at Ravenscraig in Lanarkshire, Redcar on Teesside and Port Talbot in South Wales. The wagons allowed for significantly longer and heavier trains than previously used, and were operated by triple-headed Class 37s in the 1970s and then by pairs of Class 56s into the 1990s, when single Class 60s took over. Class 59s were also trialled on the trains to Port Talbot in South Wales and from 1998 Class 66s became the primary traction.

The wagons were designed to ‘tipple’; that is, they could be rotated about their longitudinal axis without being uncoupled from each other in a specialist frame for speed of unloading. To do this each wagon had a rotating coupler at one end; this end was painted orange for the benefit of the operating crews. The wagons used in the north east were grey and orange; those used in south Wales were blue and were labelled British Steel with the arrow logo.

n the 1980s, with the contraction of the steel industry and closure of some blast furnaces, iron ore traffic declined. At the same time construction was booming, and a high demand for box wagons in this sector led to many PTAs being acquired by Foster Yeoman and ARC Southern for use in transporting stone from the giant Mendip quarries in Somerset to London and around the south east.

Foster Yeoman and ARC locked the rotating couplers as they were not required and repainted the wagons into their own liveries. The wagons were also recoded to JTA (outers) and JUA (inners) under TOPS. Initially they operated as separate fleets, but in the mid-1990s the two companies decided to combine their rail operations under the Mendip Rail brand, and the types were often seen in mixed trains.

From the mid 1990s some wagons were also used for ballast movements and for scrap between the midlands and south Wales. In the early 2000s a batch was sold to wagon leasing company VTG, painted into a medium battleship grey and repurposed for use on sand traffic around the south east.

In the mid 1990s British Steel converted a batch of tipplers into steel coil carriers with the addition of a contoured floor and three sliding telescopic covers. In 2007 a further batch was converted for VTG. The original conversions were painted pale blue; the covers on the later variants were left unpainted alumimium.

The JSA steel carriers saw widespread use between steel production plants in south Wales and north east England and steel terminals in the south, the midlands and the north west. They were also used intermittently on imported steel. In use they were usually mixed with other covered steel carriers including BRA/BYA ‘nissen hut’ and IHA canvas covered wagons.