As the Merry-go-Round hopper coal wagons were reducing in numbers considerably, during 1997, surplus wagons donated their underframes to a fleet of ballast wagons for hire to the infrastructure maintenance companies.

A total of 1,071 were so converted between 1997 to 2007, the later wagons having some  detail differences to the  number of vertical ribs on the bodies.

 

Dapol has made models of examples from the original batch of 400 wagons built at RFS Doncaster between 1997 and 1998 Coded MHA Coalfish.

 

Features of the MHA Coalfish wagon will include:

 

 · Die-cast compensated chassis and underframe

· Die-cast and profiled wheels

· Sprung metal buffers

· Working instanter couplings coupling

· Finely applied livery