Class XO and XOA wood chip hoppers

WAGR official photo of XO25309 showing the opening of the hopper doors. (RHWA collection)

In 1976 a batch of thirty-three XO class hoppers was built for the controversial wood-chip traffic by COMENG. They were numbered 25301-25333. A second batch of eleven (25334-25344) followed from the same builder in 1980.

In more recent times the six XOs used on the wood chip trains to Albany were converted by the addition of an extension to the top of the hopper. The first examples ran for a while as class XO (see 25342 below) but these wagons have been reclassified as XOA, one (XOA25339) without a repaint from the original yellow. The initial wagons converted were 25339 - 25344. They ran in a block train with the two XGH class wagons. By June 2010 the following twenty XO had been converted to XOA 25301, 25302, 25303, 25305, 25307, 25308, 25309, 25315, 25316, 25317, 25320, 25328, 25334, 25337, 25339, 25340, 25341, 25342, 25343, 25344 to give a total of 20 XOA and 24 XO.  In 2014 Aurizon listed 22 XO for scrapping.

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