Something Fishy

While we're waiting for the website to sort itself out we thought a picture of something we've been working on for a while would liven things up, we'll be adding it to the maybe section once the website is back.

Built to an LNER design British Railways built a large number of fish vans (INSUL FISH) to service this once large traffic. Given the nature of the product speed was always of the essence so the wagons were built fully fitted, with a long wheelbase and through steam pipe to allow them to work in passenger trains, even being given numbers in the NPCCS series. The vans gained the name of Blue Spot fish vans after being fitted with roller bearings as this upgrade was signified by the application of a large blue spot on each side of the van.

Almost overnight the fish traffic was lost and subsequently there were a large number of fish vans looking for new work. Some wagons were taken into general goods stock while others were refurbished and put into use as parcels vans, coded as SPV. The vans lasted in this traffic until the early 1980's (gaining the TOPS code NRV), a number finding further use as barrier wagons, with the engineers departments and as internal user vehicles.