24.5t HOP24/HUO Coal Hopper

Introduced in 12 separate batches between 1954 and 1965, a total of 5,263 of these 24.5-ton capacity hoppers were built for British Railways (BR), with 11 of the batches constructed at the company’s Shildon wagon works and one – the last – built by Pressed Steel. The wagons represented by the Accurascale model are the 1/148 and 1/154 patterns assembled at Shildon from 1958 to 1962, which totalled 3,426 wagons. Originally designated ‘HOP24’, these hoppers were classified ‘HUO’ under BR’s Total Operations Processing System (TOPS) upon its introduction in 1973. Tasked mainly with hauling coal and coke from collieries and coke plants to power stations and ports throughout Great Britain, they displaced older open wagons from such services and are regarded as precursors to modern ‘Merry-go-Round’ (MGR) coal hoppers. They ran from 1954 to 1987, and many survived into private colliery and power plant use.

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