IRON ore was one of the first major traffic flows to be handled in dedicated trainloads. Stewarts & Lloyds had introduced the rotary tippler in 1939-40, basically a heavily-built box without doors. During the 1950s, British Railways built nearly ten thousand similar wagons having a capacity of 27 tons and serving numerous local steelworks.
However, by the beginning of the 1970s it was decided to concentrate steel production on a limited number of sites able to use high quality imported ore rather than the low yield domestic ironstone from the Midlands, which was taken to numerous local steelworks such as Hartlepool, Round Oak and Spring Vale.
New wagon fleets were built for the steelworks at Consett, Llanwern, Ravenscraig and Scunthorpe. Today only the Scunthorpe fleet remains in use. Of the original build (Nos. BSSC 26000-106, constructed by BREL Shildon in 1972), just eighty-one remain in stock: inners coded JUA Nos. BSSC 26001/002/ 007-011/014- 025/028/ 029/031-045/ 047-059/061/ 063/064/067/ 069-075/077/ 079/081-084/ 098-094 and outers coded JTA Nos. BSSC 26097-105.
Wagons remain coupled during unloading, the inners have rotary couplers at both ends, while the outers have standard screw couplings at one end.