UK: DB Cargo UK has returned to service the first of 60 BAA bogie steel wagons which are being refurbished to carry imported slab and coil to Tata Steel’s Port Talbot site.
DB Polska is manufacturing 40 ft frames for the wagons at its engineering facility at Rybnik in Poland. These are then sent for final fitting, assembly and testing at DB Cargo UK’s maintenance facility at Stoke.
Meanwhile CWE is overhauling the wagons’ 120 swing motion bogies, using the facilities of its parent company William Cook Rail in Leeds.
‘This innovative project underlines the positive benefits of being part of DB’s large international network of companies’, said DB Cargo UK’s Chief Sales Officer Roger Neary on March 17.
The first of the refurbished wagons re-entered service in February.
Tata Steel decommissioned its traditional steelmaking assets at Port Talbot in October 2024 to enable a £1·25bn investment in a 3·2 mtpa electric arc furnace which is to be commissioned late in 2027 or early 2028. While this project is under way it is importing steel slab and hot rolled coil for processing on its rolling, coating or tube-making lines. The BAA wagons can be converted to transport feedstock for the electric arc furnace once it starts production.
‘DB Cargo UK is an integral and important part of Tata Steel’s supply chain’, said Neary, and the wagons ‘will play a pivotal role in its smooth transition to green steel production’.
