Cheltenham Trains - Gloucestershire - April 2018

Hugh Jorgan;352610Picture 8 shows a date on the side of the wagon which is when its due for maintenance on 21-10-95 and the code of the maintenance depot of 40307 said:

It made it - all least to the inspection sidings, where it was condemned for revenue service but added to the CE internal fleet because of its good condition. Most of these 16 Ton mineral wagons were designed for tippler operations and thus could be used in the carrying of coal also, but lack of continuous through braking soon made many of the older ones redundant and thus only used for internal traffic. The advent of the HAA wagon for the 'Merry - Go - Round' system of coal delivery to the new Mega Watt Power Stations soon meant there was a glut of scrap 16 Ton wagons. The 32 Ton HAA was supposedly designed to allow year round delivery of coal from pit to power station furnace in a none stop system, with no coal stored on the ground at power stations. Thank God there was storage space for ground stocks at these new stations, because the system was an abject failure in sub zero winter temperatures. It was quite a sight to see a 16 ton block of frozen coal fall out of an inverted wagon on the tipper, but at least the coal was discharged and broke up as it hit the tippler hopper. Fast forward to the 70's and the 80's and I was spending my summer months at High Marnham power station; where the CEGB had built a huge freezer to take a loaded HAA wagon and subject it to winter conditions, trying to discharge frozen loads from HAA wagons. Yes the Committee designed HAA was an abject failure, the load froze up in zero temperatures so that the hopper doors would not open and the load would not discharge. Sadly the innovative door operating mechanism was the root cause of this failure - good idea on paper, utter failure in bloody winter. We tried all things - spraying with anti freeze, none-stick coatings in the wagon interior surfaces etc. The problem was that the mechanical mining method produced a product that had a very small sieve size - no large lumps like in the old days - just what my Dad Called 'slack' and played hell with the coal man if he delivered more than a handful down the cellar shoot! And why the tests in summer? In winter the power station hopper staff were doing all they could to discharge coal and feed the hoppers to keep the station operating. Very close run thing one severe winter for the Trent Stations; happy days!

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