British Railways was created in 1948 when the Great Western, the London, Midland & Scottish, the London & North Eastern and the Southern were taken into public ownership. It inherited all their locomotives, passenger and goods rolling stock. Whilst much has been published on BR locomotives and passenger stock, accurate and detailed coverage of the large inventory of vehicles used to convey the huge volumes of goods traffic carried by the railways at that time, is less readily available. This new series sets out to provide that information.
This latest volume in the series tackles one of the biggest categories of wagons inherited by British Railways on its formation. This encompasses the various types of fully-enclosed vans, both those used for general traffic and for vehicles allocated to specific types of traffic. Also included in this volume are those vehicles used for the beginnings of container traffic, both the special wagons constructed for this and their demountable containers.
Two other significant types of wagons are covered in this volume. These are the early fully-enclosed hopper wagons and cattle wagons. The latter had something of a renaissance in the post-WW2 period and continued to be built well into the BR era, with the carriage of livestock not being finally abandoned on the network until 1972.
