Pressed Steel built 5,550 wagons to this Lot, out of 11,941 examples which were built in 1957 and 1958. All wagons of this type have a gap in the body side for a pocket for storage of the securing chains, as well as Oleo pneumatic buffers and vacuum brake. The continuous brake enabled fast running of container services. These wagons were used throughout Great Britain.
Conflat wagons had a wooden deck, here shown removed giving access for steelwork repairs.
This type of wagon carried the British Railway standard 3 ton container, a type which was suited to the railway's road cartage operation so providing a door-to-door service with road haulage at both ends of the journey and the main haul undertaken by rail. The 3 ton rating derived from the practical limit for horse haulage by road. By remaining with this traditional design, the railway missed out on the growing market for movement of international seagoing containers which were in fact too large for the standard British loading gauge. By not facing up to gauge widening in the 1960s and 70s, the railway failed to capture a large and growing traffic which went almost entirely to the road haulage industry.
D. Rowland, British Railways Wagons: the first half million, London 1996.
