Report content as inappropriate
Original Text (Annotation: EAW050235 / 854335)
'
Because of it size, steel slab was one to few products to be carried by the railway on large, 8 wheeled bogie wagons. Even here there are small 4 wheeled wagons marshalled in between the large ones, to allow for the overhang of the load.
There are other large wagons in this picture including bogie iron ore carries and long wheelbase mineral wagons and low side steel wagons. How much more efficient the railway could have been if such larger wagons had been adopted for wider use. But in the same way as the unions are blamed for British industrial decline, the nationalised railway is blamed for not investing in bigger wagons. In both cases it could be suggested it was the failure of the private heavy industry and the private railways pre 1948 to invest in new equipment that was the cause of much of Britain's industrial inefficiency. By 1953, indeed by 1923, nearly all European freight wagons were longer wheelbase with great capacity both in terms of load and speed of travel. Indeed the French returned many small mineral wagons shipped to France after WW2 as being too small to be of any use. We just added them to our stock of ridiculously small wagons.
Also see EAW050238 EAW050244 '