One each of these authentic BR goods wagons from the Graham Farish standard range.
Back in the good old days when rail transport ruled the roost, the railway companies all built fleets of wagons to carry their customers' wares from A to B. Crates and barrels could be loaded into basic open wagons, maybe covered with a tarpaulin, but more easily damaged items would need to travel in the luxury of a covered van. One particular type of traffic which the railways handled in high volume was perishable foodstuffs, and these tended to have special vans designed to keep the consignment in good condition on its way from producer to consumer. Fruit vans were fitted with extra ventilation to keep the heat and humidity to a minimum, and in the pre-war era the London and North Eastern Railway had their wagonworks turn out great numbers of these specialist vehicles to carry the crops of eastern England from the farmer to the market. When the railways were nationalised in 1948, all the LNER's locomotives and coaches and wagons passed into the ownership of the newly-created British Railways, and sooner or later the LNER livery was painted over with BR's own colourscheme. The fruit vans were given a coat of the reddish-brown colour termed 'bauxite', indicating vehicles fitted with vacuum brake gear, and carried the lettering 'FRUIT' on the doors to denote their specialist nature.
The old vans and wagons would keep serving BR for a good few years yet, but as the post-war era got into its stride then old-fashioned ways of doing things started to be swept aside by new-fangled ideas. Loading and unloading boxes from lorries to railway vans and back to lorries was painfully slow and inefficient, and a quicker slicker approach was needed for the modern world. Containerisation was the answer, eliminating all the intermediate handling at a stroke, and it revolutionised goods transport almost overnight. BR built a fleet of special flat wagons known as 'conflats' to carry this traffic, along with a range of containers to travel on them. Our wagon is a 'Conflat A' in the familiar 'fitted' bauxite, carrying an AF insulated container in ice-blue livery bearing BR's 'Door to Door' slogan and logo. For a few years the fruit van and the container wagon would have run side-by-side, until the vans were shunted off into the sidings of history. Soon enough the conflats and their first-generation containers would follow, replaced by today's high-speed bogie flats and ISO tin boxes. But you can turn back the clock on your layout with our BR Goods Set 4.
Please note that these wagons are boxed individually.