Rail Data Review Details

Title:

British Railways Wagons - The First Half Million

Author:

Don Rowland

Publisher:

David and Charles

Format:

Book

Subject:

Wagons

Category:

Detail

Spec:

192 pages, almost A4-sized, hard-back with dust-jacket, 175 B&W pictures. ISBN: 0-7153-8183-0

Publication date:

1985

Summary:

An excellent overview of the wagons built during BR's first 20 years, with historical narrative, lots of diagrams and some useful appendices.

Review:

1985 was a good year for wagon books, with two major titles appearing. The first was actually written in 1982 and is an excellent overview of the entire BR wagon fleet from 1948 until about the mid-1960s. As the sub-title suggests, this book focuses more on the 'golden era' of wagon building, and consigns all developments since the introduction of air-brakes to a final chapter headed Apocrypha. In its favour the book does include chapters on departmental wagons and containers, and all chapters are littered with drawings (121 in total, reproduced at 1:76 scale). Most of these are derived from the BR diagrams and lack underframe details and plan views although some very interesting types are included. Another strength of this book is the appendices. The first lists the mineral wagons inherited from the Ministry of War Transport. The second lists all the number ranges used on BR wagons in this period with the lot numbers for each. The third correlates lot numbers to diagram numbers, and the fourth lists all the diagrams with numbering and build details. The mid-1960s cut off means that some types are ommitted but these appendices form a reference that I still use quite regularly.

Reviewed:

07/11/2008 by Thomas Young (Comments made by others can appear in the notes section towards the bottom of this page)

Sample pages:

(Click on any image to view full-sized in a new window)

This hard-back book came with a printed dust-jacket

A typical inside page with mixture of narrative text, diagrams (at 1:76) and photos

Tables at the back of the book give details of builds to each diagram. Printed landscape.

Notes:

No notes have been left yet. ?There may be some notes posted but which have not yet been approved.

Edits:

Record edited 1 time.

Time / Date	Edited by	Change
02:34 on Mon 08/04/2019	Thomas Young	Summary added