What are....PFA's?

[Dennis]

Having a look through ChristopherJ's latest collection http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=11701 I noticed a shot of a PFA http://ukrailrollingstock.fotopic.net/p35871140.html

A 4 wheeled container carrier seems a bit unusual to me; anyone know the origin of these and are they used to carry specialised container types?

 

[Coxster]

As far as I know they carry coal.

 

[Dennis]

Thats what I thought at first ,but after looking at a few pics of these, none of the recent ones (that I came across) mention coal and seem to be carrying quite a variety of containers.

I seem to recall containerised household coal trains running in the mid nineties with uniform red BFL liveried containers; not sure what stock these used.

 

[Bonemaster]

4 axle container wagons are not half as rare as you would think EWS has circa 100 FPA 4 axle container flats, that have been seen in recent months at Newport, Ely and Warrington on containerised coal traffic on Enterprise traffic

The PFA were built 1986-1988 by Standard Wagon Company for Cawoods coal traffic to Ireland from Seaforth Docks Liverpool, and were later transferred to British Fuels and were used on some traffic from Daw Mill to Aberdeen.

Following the ceasation of this traffic many of these wagons were stored and scrapped, however somes ownership was transferred to DRSL for containerised traffic from Sellafield. Tje British Fuels examples are now stored mainly at Mossend and Perth.

There was also a run of 40 prototype PFA wagons built in 1987 by Procor as pictured in the first post these all differ from one another and are all owned by the MOD as they have been since introduction and are used to transport containerised traffic for the Army

 

[Dennis]

Thanks for that Bonemaster.