Back in the heyday of the steam railway, coal was the fuel of the moment. Every home and office was heated by coal, and every industry was powered by it. Mining the ancient black diamonds from the depths of the earth was a very big business indeed, and there were substantial profits to be made by the men who owned and ran the collieries. But competition was cutthroat, and the mine owners didn't always want the distraction of dealing with multitudes of individual small customers. They were happier selling in bulk, and leaving the small-scale transactions to somebody else. And to fill this role in the market, a network of middle-men sprang up, calling themselves 'coal factors'. They bought coal from the producers at the mines, and then sold it on to factories or shipping lines or coal merchants. And of course there was a mark-up in the price, out of which the coal factors made their profits. Thrutchley were one of the largest and most successful of these coal factor businesses, and their wagons would have been a familiar sight pretty much anywhere on the railway network. They could have been seen at any colliery from which they were buying coal, and at any factory or dock or local coal-siding where they'd found a customer to sell it to. Our wagon is lettered with the locations of their major offices in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Cardiff, but in truth they were a nationwide operation and had depots here there and everywhere, not just on the LMS and Great Western systems.
Coal isn't king any more, of course, and the middle-men make their profits in other industries nowadays. But you can bring back the good old days, when coal meant money, on your layout with our Thrutchley wagon.

To buy this wagon along with our H&BR refrigerator van, please go to our 'N' Sets page.