Description
Cattle wagons came in a variety of sizes and most companies had their own preferences. The NBR chose the medium size as their standard and were joined by the other Scottish companies and the North Eastern. In contrast the London and North Eastern preferred the long cattle wagon.
The first NBR design, to which many hundreds of vehicles were built, appeared in 1887 and a modification was made in 1892 with a slight increase in width. These earlier vehicles had wooden underframes and end stanchions with grease axle boxes. In 1893 a steel underframe wagon was produced with oil axle boxes and steel end stanchions. Many hundreds of both designs were produced over the years. A number are known to have been Westinghouse piped. Our model depicts the later version with oil axleboxes and steel underframe designated Diagram 67.
The transport of cattle was a major source of income for the North British Railway; at Grouping over 500 cattle wagons were inherited by the LNER. Only two survived to Nationalisation; photographic evidence shows wagons awaiting scrap at Cowlairs in 1947.