UKF wagon

Resource Type: Image | Posted on 2nd December 2011 by Liam Physick

This image shows a wagon supplied by UK Fertilisers. In 1968, British Rail built a fleet of bogie curtain-sided wagons to carry fertiliser, operated by the British Railway Traffic and Electric Company (BRT) and leased to Shellstar Ltd., the UK Fertilisers branch of the oil company Shell. The curtain sides did not last, as if the load moved they bulged outwards, causing the van to be out of gauge. Therefore, in the mid-1970s they were fitted with new sides and given pairs of double doors. Another problem of the curtain sides was that they made it difficult to add markings, so a rectangular plate was fitted onto the left-hand end, bolted to the triangular support, to carry the TOPS markings - underneath, they were coded PWA, later JWA. Inside, the vans had partitions between each pair of doors, enabling them to move part-loaded without the pallets of bagged fertiliser sliding about. By the 1980s, the vans wore UKF livery, as seen here - they had previously worn a number of liveries. In August 1988, UKF was taken over by the Finnish company Kemira, and its trading name changed to Kemira Ince Ltd., leading the vans to be repainted in Kemira’s blue livery with white lettering. In 1993, Kemira switched to road transportation and in 1994 the vans were scrapped

Tagged under: rocket 150, goods, british rail, freight, grand cavalcade, uk fertilisers

Categorised under: Landmarks, Landscapes & Locomotives