North British Railway, LNER

Each railway company developed their own form of Cattle Wagon, which came came in a variety of shapes and sizes for the important livestock traffic. The North British preferred the medium sized wagon and this became their standard alongside most of the other Scottish railway companies. The first version of this vehicle appeared in 1887, of which many hundreds were built. Like most successful designs minor changes were introduced over the following years. In 1892 the internal width of the van was increased marginally. Further changes in 1893 saw the replacement of the wooden frames & stanchions and grease axleboxes with steel frames & stanchions and oil axle boxes. The steel underframe version with oil axleboxes is the subject of this model.

The livestock transport was an important revenue earner for most railway companies, particularly the NBR. At the time of grouping in 1923 over 1700 vehicles cattle wagons were passed on to the LNER. With the development of road transport the cattle traffic fell sharply, especially on short haul. The vast majority of Diagram 67s would have been scrapped by the following decade.

In revenue service these vehicles would have had a working life of at least 30 years. Examples were still extent in 1947 and some were photographed condemned Cowlairs.

NBR Cattle wagons would have been a familiar sight throughout Scotland and the Borders. They would also be seen further south, especially on the east coast main line, taking cattle to Northumbria & possibly as far south as Yorkshire. Pre grouping photographs show extensive use of lime wash as a disinfectant. This practice died out in the 1920's with the introduction of less harmful chemicals.

Comments from builders of this model may be found here.

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Made from white metal our model has sides and ends with separate axleguards, brake gear, levers and V's and steel headed white metal buffers.. The model is supplied with an embossed Plasticard floor and a preformed roof. A fully detailed instruction sheet is included giving detailed lettering and painting information. To download the most recent assembly instructions, current Version 1.00 released April 2001, 2 Sides A4 (73Kb Acrobat 3.01 file).

To read the instructions you will need Adobe Acrobat reader (v3.01 or better). Click 'Get Acrobat Reader' to get a copy of Acrobat Reader: Note this may involve a long download of between 0.5 Mb & 8 Mb depending on the selected version.

Don't understand our terminology? most terms and phrases are explained in our glossary.

Items required to complete the model:-

• Wheels: 12mm diameter open spoke.
• Paint - we recommend Precision Paint or in some cases Humbrol Acrylic: see North British Railway wagon liveries for suggested product numbers.
• Three link couplings.
• Transfers - we recommend HMRS see North British Railway wagon liveries for suggested product numbers.

supplies a wide range of North British Railway rolling stock components see here for details.

Paint, wheels and transfers are available from our sister company Wizard Models.

To

this wagon click Wizard Models.

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Wagons on the LNER North British No1, J Hooper P9 and 43
A Pictorial Record of LNER wagons, P Tatlow P121
NBR Wagons some design aspects, G W M Sewell, P36

A list of railway book sellers may be found here.

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