The heavy industry of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was fuelled largely by coke rather than coal, as it burned at the higher and more even temperatures which foundry furnaces needed for maximum efficiency. Unfortunately you don't just dig coke out of the ground. You have to make it by baking coal in coke ovens at astronomical temperatures for a couple of days, an industrial process which generates pollution on a scale comparable to a modest volcano. The coal it consumes has to be brought from the colliery to the coking plant by the trainload, which is where this wagon comes in. It would have travelled from the old L&Y heartlands of Accrington, via the metals of the Midland and the LNWR, to the collieries of Lancashire,Yorkshire, Staffordshire and sometimes even further afield, and then brought back the coking coal which was the raw material of the Lancashire Foundry Coke Co Ltd. Add the authentic look of the industrial north to your LMS, LNER or even GWR layout with one of these wagons.