I'm trying to find out if there are any n gauge bio-mas hoppers of the type that is seen running into  Drax on the market yet


Tony

@Vonzack was looking at them, here, dunno if they progressed. I've got some of his KTAs, KFAs and FEAs, and they're excellent models.

Not in N gauge...

Hattons had a special edition done in 00, but at £83 each which is over a grand for a full length train, they apparently haven't sold too well, so don't expect an N gauge version any time soon...

  many thanks for your prompt replies guys, so it looks like there will be none manufactured in the near future. My next question is, is it possible to kitbash any rtr that may be on the market?

They're IIAs, I believe a rebuild of the GBRF hoppers of the same designation. Very different look though. Mark's 3D print is probably most likely source, but it's not on his Shapeways shop.

Quote from: njee20 on February 17, 2017, 08:47:01 PM
They're IIAs, I believe a rebuild of the GBRF hoppers of the same designation. Very different look though.

there were an initial batch that were the GBRf coal hoppers, re-worked to take the biomass load, work included hopper doors and pneumatic roof panels and other internal bits.

The large Drax hopper is a completely new wagon design, built specifically to the specification Drax provided.

The 00 model was produced and paid for by Drax so that they could give them to corperate Clients, they then released the remainder of the wagons through Hattons to try and get some of the outlay back.

As the design, 00 tooling and livery is owned by Drax, I doubt there would be another run permitted in 00 and they dont seem too intersted in allowing an N gauge version to be done, a manufaturer had enquired about if they could do it and were turned down, acording to their reply in a discussion about the wagon.

This could be one of the wagons that gets away!

Alistair

I have not seen the Drax ones, but the ones that were used on the Portbury workings were modified coal hoppers. I was talking to somebody operating a layout at TINGS in 2015 and he said he was looking at printing the doors to go on the roof. There does seem to be copyright issues over this conversion.

Geoff

The copyright issue would be with the big drax ones, Not the modified coal hoppers.

Alistair

Back in the mid-1980s there was a prototype full size hopper wagon built by Procor or Standard Wagon using the design concept used by Drax for these 21st century bio-mass wagons. The key design feature was the extra hoppers between bogies and the headstocks. This meant that the whole of the body length was used for cargo, which was not normal at the time for hopper wagons in the UK. It was built with an aluminium body and eqipped with the very earliest design of the LTF bogie. The wagon was short but had a payload of 82 tonnes for 102 tonnes gross weight, and was intended for limestone movement. I recall that two of the bigger design problems were finding space for the air brake distributor and discharge gate rams. I have not yet found my photos of it. I do not think that the wagon ever ran outside the factory. Aluminium wagon bodies for aggregates were an innovation in the UK market at the time and the first generation of Procor aluminium bogie hoppers in service with Foster Yeoman were suffering underframe fractures. They were held together by installing tensioned cables between the headstocks running the length of the wagon which kept them going until Foster Yeoman took delivery of the O&K hoppers equipped with an LHB style German bogie in 1988/89

Hi,

IIA-D

I'd pretty much got the IIA-D to test print stage to see if it was viable, as can be seen from the images below. Still needed to make space for the coupling pockets, fit some brake gear details in the hopper cut-outs and sort out the bulky door lifting gear. The print would have been a chassis, the upper body of the hopper in FUD and the bogies in WSF. I'd still really like to do some of these, I see them quite regularly and they are quite striking compared to other wagons.





IIA-C Hopper Doors (GBRf)

These are pretty much done, and they just sit in the wagon like a coal load. The problem here is the lifting gear, to get it looking something like, it has to be printed just inside the tolerances Shapeways allow and therefor it's very fragile and it didn't work out too well. I think the lifting gear would work allot better as an etch which could be attached to the printed doors.





This was a printed WSF version


This is a painted  FUD Version without the lifting gear



Cheers, Mark.

Very impressive. I would have an interest in a 10 wagon rake of the Drax style wagons if you decide to develop these.

The lifting arms on the IIA-C need a bit of thinking outside the box. Even a brass casting is probably not going to be strong. A pliable plastic would be desirable, keyed to the corrugated end sheet, although I see the challenge with 3D printing given the thin profile of the actuation mechanism.

 :thankyousign:Mark, very impressed with 3D sketches & photos. Looks like I may have been too ambitious with this idea, sounds like a lot of hard work & detailing still to be carried out by you guys with far more knowledge and skills than I ever hope to have 

Woodbury22uk
Would a 10 wagon rake be prototypical for bio-mas trains?

Cheers

Tony

Quote from: hawkeye on February 18, 2017, 06:01:29 PM
Woodbury22uk
Would a 10 wagon rake be prototypical for bio-mas trains?

Cheers

Tony

It would be a realistic rake on my layout but I think you are looking at between 20 and 30 wagons for the real world depending on the origin port and the route taken. I have seen a video of 23 wagons behind an LT liveried Class 66.

Quote from: hawkeye on February 18, 2017, 06:01:29 PM
Would a 10 wagon rake be prototypical for bio-mas trains?

Hull - Drax trains are usually either 18 or 24 wagons. It May be coincidental but multiples of 6 seem common in a lot of block trains, so maybe 12 rather than 10 would be appropriate for a representative shortened rake?

Hi Mike,

On our club layout Horseley Fields passenger trains tend to be correct rakes (mostly they are units, so we have no choice in that) but for the longer freight trains we tend to observe the 2/3 rule rounded up, so, for example, our DB coal train is not 19 hoppers but 13, which to most eyes looks about right.

I think this might be, in part, because the eye tends to follow the locomotive and rarely takes in the whole rake, even for the short period that the full train is entirely visible in the scenic area.

For the biomass hoppers, which I agree would make an eyecatching and impressive train, I'd probably be happy with a similar number.

Cheers

Ben A.