Covered Vans

Build Date 1888-1962
Operators Various
Livery Various
Status: Various
Owned By
 NNR & M&GN Society

History

Railways were originally built primarily to carry freight traffic and covered vans were essential in carrying a multitude of products that needed to be kept predominantly undercover. They are therefore an essential part of any rail system and equally, an important part in any collection that tells the story of railway freight.

The NNR has a reasonable collection of covered vans, with some preserved for their historical interest but many also fulfilling a useful function in static roles or as useful storage. In the future it is hoped that the currently quite small number of vans that are performing both storage roles and also running in the demonstration freight set can be joined by others that are currently in static use but not in a good enough condition to run in service.

Preservation

The Southern Railway (and later British Railways) built many long wheelbase 4-wheeled wooden vans known as Parcels and Miscellaneous Vehicles (PMV) which as their name suggests were used primarily for parcels and newspapers (a huge market) but were also general purpose enough to carry pretty much anything that would fit through the side doors. Like most vans they were cheap to build and numerous.

The NNR is home to three PMV’s and also a similar CCT which has essentially the same body but was built with opening end doors to allow cars to drive into it from and end loading dock. The equipment was later removed and the vehicle doors replaced with plain planking making 1439 almost identical to a standard PMV.

Of the four examples, 1137 is only a grounded body and is publicly inaccessible being used at Weybourne to support the Permanent Way department. 1359 was cosmetically restored in BR Crimson livery in 2018 and operated briefly before being used statically at Sheringham by the Signal & Telegraph department. 1439 & 1476 are both cosmetically restored in Southern Green livery and used statically in the platform at Weybourne, with 1439 being used as a book shop and 1476 a model railway.

One of our oldest wagons, built in 1908 for Colman’s Mustard factory in Norwich. At this time the company employed 2,300 people and had a significant number of vans employed transporting their product nationwide. 4807 was one of the first wagons to arrive at the early NNR, being preserved as early as 1970. Scant resources at the time led the van to fall into disuse and over the years several attempts were started to restore the van but were not successful.

Happily however, salvation eventually arrived and Special Objectives for the Local Disabled (SOLD) at Lowestoft took the project on and undertook comprehensive cosmetic restoration for display outside the William Marriot Museum at Holt.

4807’s delicate structural nature along with its wooden underframe (the only vehicle on the NNR to retain an original wooden chassis) means it cannot run in the demonstration goods train with the other steel wagons. It does however remain publicly viewable outside the museum at Holt.

“Fruit D” 92097 was built in 1958 by British Railways’ Swindon Workshops and was produced as part of an extension batch of an outdated design created by the Great Western Railway in 1939. The Fruit D design was so named as during Great Western Railway days each type of wagon was assigned a telegraphic code to enable formations of wagons to be easily communicated by telegraph. As this type of van had extra ventilation built in specifically to handle fruit and produce traffic it was assigned the designation “Fruit”. The D suffix was merely to identify separate types or batches, so presumably the Fruit D was the fourth in a series of Fruit vans.

The Fruit D’s were built with electric lighting and were fully braked with standard vacuum braking, two features which made the vehicles suitable for conveyance in passenger trains. For this reason, the vans also carried the branding “Passenger” and during British Railways days carried the colour schemes for passenger coaching stock rather than goods stock.

After a successful career on BR, 92097 was acquired by the M&GN Society and moved to the NNR in 1975 where it operated in freight (and occasionally passenger), repainted into BR crimson livery. In more recent times the vehicle has seen restoration work and repaints in 2012, 2015 & 2024. Today it sees regular use in the demonstration freight train and occasionally in passenger trains.

The most basic of covered vans were general purpose four wheeled wooden vehicles simply known as “box vans”. As railways grew the standard capacity of the humble box van increased from around 8 tons up to 12 tons which became the standard. These were built in huge numbers by all of the “big four” railway companies in the first half of the 20th century and British Railways continued the trend throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s before the designs were finally replaced by larger and more modern air braked and often bogied examples.

The NNR has a total of five 12-ton standard box vans, all built by BR between 1949 & 1962 except 514207 which is an earlier London Midland and Scottish example dating from the Second World War. One van (755094) is a designated Fruit Van as it has extra ventilation built into the ends to ripen fruit in transit. The vans are predominantly used statically for storage although the youngest example (784254) is also restored to run in the demonstration goods set and has even been towed along the line by one of the railway’s railcars which was a 1960’s practice on rural branch lines.

The oldest (and only 19th century) covered van is Great Eastern Railway cattle van 633023, a real old lady having been built in 1888 to carry, as the name suggests, livestock. It ran in this format until around 1910 when it was replaced by new cattle wagons which had attendants compartments, an addition requested by farmers at the time. After replacement, 633023 was converted into a more enclosed fruit van and had a second life carrying produce until eventual withdrawal in 1928. It then lost its underframe and became part of a bungalow near Kerdiston, Norfolk, alongside Great Eastern carriage body 524. Both were rescued and moved to the NNR with the coach now restored as a grounded body as the Holt “Railway Cottage” and 633023 being stored for future restoration.

Today, 633023 is one of the few wagons at the NNR that it stored not in use and is inside the shed at Holt patiently awaiting its turn for restoration. The current plan is to conserve and restore the surviving side to later Fruit condition and on the other side build a replacement new example to original as-built cattle configuration. This will be possible owing to the fact that one side was completely lost when the van was converted to a bungalow. A replacement underframe will be found, most likely from a historically less-valuable BR-era box van that has deteriorated in condition.

Number Type Built Notes
1137 13T SR Parcels & Misc. Vehicle (PMV) 1936 Ashford Grounded body Weybourne
1359 13T SR Parcels & Misc. Vehicle (PMV) 1939 Ashford Static use Sheringham
1439 13T SR Parcels & Misc. Vehicle (CCT) 1952 Ashford Static use Weybourne
1476 13T SR Parcels & Misc. Vehicle (PMV) 1951 Wolverton Static use Weybourne
4807 Colman’s Mustard Van 1908 Harrison & Camm Static Holt Museum
92097 12T GWR “Fruit D” 1958 Swindon
514207 12T LMS Box Van 1940 Derby Static use Weybourne
633023 GER Cattle Van 1888 GER Stored awaiting restoration
750939 12T BR Box Van 1949 Wolverton Static use Weybourne
755094 12T BR Box Van (Fruit) 1950 Faverdale Static use Weybourne
783071 12T BR Box Van 1962 Wolverton Static use Weybourne
784254 12T BR Box Van 1962 Wolverton