The Railway Clearing House (RCH) was an organisation supported by all Britain's railway companies. Its main function was to apportion income for journeys that crossed company boundaries, but it also had the role of developing standard patterns for wagons, which could be built by any railway company or private owner in the knowledge that they would be accepted anywhere.
This is an example of the RCH's standard wagon to carry 12 tons of coal, built in huge numbers in the 1920s and 1930s for colliery owners and traded between them as mines opened or closed. This wagon was used at collieries in Fife, and is a former National Coal Board wagon. For display it has been painted in the livery of James Nimmo & Company, who owned Kinneil Colliery at Bo'ness.
