Rapido Trains N 942005 SR Freight Train Pack ex-SECR Box Van 5 & 7 Plank Opens and Brake Van SR Brown Large Lettering
SR Freight Train pack comprising new and detailed Rapido Trains models of the SECR standard design wagons plus a 6-wheel goods brake van.
The SECR wagons were designed in the 1910s to provide a modern wagon fleet for the SECR and were adopted by the Southern Railway as their initial standard types for new construction after 1923.
Freight Train pack contains one each of the SECR D1426 covered box van, D1349 5 plank open wagon, D1355 7 plank open wagon and a SECR dual-veranda 6-wheel goods train brake van all finished in pre-1936 Southern Railway livery of goods brown with large lettering.
Chief Mechanical Engineer Richard Maunsell set about providing the merged SECR system with a range of modern and highly serviceable locomotives and rolling stock. Aided by Lionel Lynes, one of a number of talented engineers recruited from Swindon, as Chief Draftsman for the Carriage & Wagon section a modern steel wagon underframe was designed and used as the basis for a range of new standard wagons. Ordered towards the end of WW1 the first wagons entered service before the 1922 grouping of the railways, however the Southern Railway selected Maunsell to continue in his role as CME and more batches of the modern SECR wagons were ordered as the Southern Railway standard types.
Although the Southern later changed a number of details to better suit traffic across the entire system the familiar lines of the Southern Railway wagons built up to nationalisation, including the triple-arc 'Lynes' roof of the vans, are evident in these SECR vehicles.
Being of modern construction and using robust steel underframes the majority of these wagons passed to British Railways ownership in 1948, though by then accumulating 30 years in service were beginning to be assigned to departmental and engineering service.