Private Owner Wagons

Private Owner Wagons

A Twelfth Collection

In this twelfth excursion into the neglected world of the Private
Owner Wagon, the author examines the fleets of a prestigious
educational institution, a Midlands factory which made the guns
for the finest fighting ships of the First World War and a little known
Surrey coal factor with an intriguing collection of wagons which
almost defied identification.
Also featured are war-torn wagons of several lesser owners who
may have been otherwise forgotten, obscure coal merchants from
Northampton and Oxford and an otherwise obscure Dorset brewery.
A number of Gloucester RC&WCo. photographs are included,
many published for the first time, with full descriptions of the
wagons and their owners. These include several that were sold
as secondhand by that company, mainly to small operators
established in the 1930s and whose history is little-known, but
the wagons themselves may have survived the Second World War
with much of their lettering intact.
Also details of over 3,500 orders from the surviving order books
for the period 1894 to 1923 for the wagon builder Charles Roberts
have now been transcribed by the author and he has analysed
several aspects of their contents which reveal a few surprises.
Hardcover, 160 pages.