WAGONS OF THE MIDDLE BRITISH RAILWAYS ERA: A Pictorial Study of the 1955 to 1961 Period

David Larkin continues his comprehensive survey of British Railways goods wagons from where he left off in the first volume, here covering some of the new designs that were introduced by BR during a period of great change.The success of these designs was patchy – some being good in their day, but others being failures from the start.

The way forward for mineral traffic was block trains of automatic-braked stock, as had been demonstrated by the ICI limestone trains that had operated between Derbyshire and Cheshire before World War II. However, BR not only continued to build vast numbers of small 16-ton mineral wagons, but developed brand new marshalling yards to sort them. Similarly, general merchandise continued to be carried in small open wagons and vans, while much larger European wagons were already entering Britain daily via the Dover and Harwich train ferries.

With the same profusion of photographs as the first volume, and including lot and diagram details, number ranges, builders and livery details of the vehicles, this series is building into a veritable “ABC” of BR wagons.