PTA/JTA/JUA and JSA Project Update

With our PFA wagons now landing with customers, focus must now turn to our PTA/JTA/JUA and JSA wagons we announced in mid and late 2019.

We aimed to land these wagons this month, and from the early progress and production prototypes progress was good. The samples of the aggregate box wagons captured the distinctive shape and profile of these iconic wagons, and the steel wagons, which also followed later in October, also looked well on the way with samples.

However, the samples were lacking some of the key details we requested for these wagons, such as the cast text on the bogies, rivet detail on the steel carriers, and other minor details. Rivet detail has turned out nice all the same. Very subtle indeed.

The hood mechanism on the JSAs has not stood up to the rigeurs of testing either. We are keen to keep it as close to scale as possible, and although they will need careful handling (and not to be picked up by the hood!) they require more robustness to be built in. The factory also needed to tool the coils, as they were forgotten about. Here is a first look at how they have turned out.

The worst issue of all though was our flashing tail light, which as you can see below.... well, they say a picture says a thousand words, so we shall say no more....

(We will also make sure that our hand model does not have paint all over their mitts next time we use them!)

Obviously, this needs fixing as 1) It's currently brighter than the sun 2) It's not red and 3) It doesnt blink (we are lucky that this one didnt blink in hindsight!) 

 We had requested that the factory make these changes back in November, but while some have been made, others still require correction. Unfortunately this means the wagons are delayed.

We are expecting wagons with full and final corrections as well as full decoration  samples in February, just after Chinese New Year. Once these are approved our agreed production slot with China will begin, which will see both the PTA/JTA/JUA and all JSA wagons completed in June and delivered to the UK in July 2020. We would like to apologise for this delay, but these must be right and something we are 100% happy with, and right now they are not. 

As a result of this delay, we will be keeping our special offer on the PTA/JTA/JUAs open of buy any one pack, get the second with 10% off until they arrive in stock. If you want to avail of this offer, click on this link.