OO Gauge enthusiasts can soon look forward to new Private Owner wagons built by the Gloucester Railway Carriage and Wagon Company (GRC&WW).

With these wagons, Rapido Trains UK is enhancing its Private Owner wagon range with 18 seven-Plank Private Owner Wagons from Britain’s most famous wagon builder. All have fully detailed and decorated interior ironwork strapping, with variants covering wagons with and without end doors.

These will be the first OO Gauge ready-to-run wagons with internal ironwork strapping that includes rivet details@Gloucester’s seven-plank wagons were 15-foot long and had internal strapping.

First introduced in the 1890s, they underwent very few changes between then and the early 1920s, with some with and others without end doors. The wagons were both sold and hired to private companies throughout the UK, with GRC&WW being responsible for the maintenance of the hired versions. By the end of World War II, the GRC&WW hire fleet comprised 10,000 wagons, which were all nationalised.

In the 1920s. GRC&WW introduced newer designs, but there is no record of how many of the 1890s designs were inherited by BR, and none survived into preservation.

The 18 variants include the following liveries:

• Cambrian Mercantile Collieries, side and end doors.
• Crane & Company, side and end doors.
• Crynant Colliery Company, side and end doors.
• Diamond Anthracite, side and end doors.
• E. H. Swift, side and end doors.
• F. Edens, side door only.
• George & Matthews, side door only.
• H. Syrus, side door only.
• I. W. Baldwin, side and end doors.
• John Stephens, Son, & Co. Ld., side door only.
• Kingsbury, side door only.
• Neasden Great Central Railway & Metropolitan Employees Coal Club, side door only.
• Payne & Son, side door only.
• R. Webster & Sons, side door only.
• Tudhope, side door only.
• W. T. Williams, side door only.
• Westbury Iron Works, side door only.
• William Duck, side door only.

Further details about the wagons are online at https://rapidotrains.co.uk/rch-1907-private-owner-wagons/. Rapido has engineering prototypes, which are undergoing review, and they can be ordered for £32.95 directly from www.rapidotrains.co.uk or from an official Rapido retailer.

This range of wagons follows Rapido’s recent announcement of two new ranges of OO Gauge wagons, including South Eastern Railway (SER)/South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR) ten-ton open wagons and SER /SECR 20-ton six-wheel brake vans, and a range of OO Gauge pre-grouping wagons as used on the Great Central Railway.