ONE OF THE ICONIC wagons of the Railfreight era was the brightly coloured blue and white Scottish Malt Distillers Polybulk bogie hopper wagons (referred to as Distillers Polybulks in this article).
They were introduced in 1983 following the success of a similar design built by Fauvet Girel in 1981 (Diagram E518).
Coded as Diagram E538 and TOPS PIA-Y, they entered traffic around the same time as a second batch of the Fauvet Girel design (Diagram E561) which, like the 1981 batch, carried a colourful livery of green and grey with yellow ‘Grainflow Polybulk’ legends.
Both wagon types were used on barley traffic for the Scottish distilling industry, working primarily up the east coast from East Anglia in Speedlink trains via Millerhill until the traffic was lost in 1991 when the Speedlink network was abandoned. They found use in the transport of other commodities following the loss of grain traffic.
The kit
Both Diagram E518 and E538 wagons can be modelled using N Gauge Society’s kits (9a and 9b) which are availabe to members through the society’s shop (www.ngaugesociety.org). The Distillers Polybulk wagons are built using Kit 9b which includes full size side overlays for the livery making finishing considerably easier than it might have been.
The superstructure is composed of injection moulded plastic including the top of the hopper and sides which appear to be the same as those supplied in kit 9a for Diagram E518, probably to save
