Rapido 973007 OO Gauge GER Diagram 48 7 Plank Wagon LNER Loco No.0344

The Great Eastern Railway operated a vast network of lines serving Northeast London's densely populated suburbs and East Anglia#s agrarian market towns, villages, coastal resorts and ports. General merchandise traffic dominated the company#s goods receipts and further grew in importance during the 1890s, while mineral traffic maintained a steady growth. This area of the country was devoid of heavy industry and mines, so the company imported coal mainly from Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire collieries.

In the 1890s the company prepared against any disruption of its supply or services from strike action by employing a finely-tuned and aggressive coal-buying policy which paid dividends during the miners# strike of 1893 and 1912. Huge stockpiles at all the major depots waxed and waned in size as prices fluctuated, and to supplement the company#s dedicated locomotive coal trucks during times of heavy purchasing, a fleet of reliable all-purpose wagons suitable for carrying both general merchandise and minerals were built to help transport coal to the region from the Midlands.

The humble high-sided open wagon was the mainstay of the fleet, with Diagram17s being the most numerous of them all.

In early 1903 while wagons of the final order of Diagram 17 were under construction, the GER was busy preparing a new 7-plank design with both an increased carrying capacity and an improved load retention for low-weight but high-volume goods. Within two months a prototype of the new 7-plank design had been completed by converting an existing 5-plank Diagram 17 wagon originally built in 1898.

Trials of the wagon were successful, although the oil axle boxes which increased its load capacity to 12 tons proved to be unnecessary, and by the end of the year, the first examples of the new 10-ton production series rolled out of the workshop. Construction of the Diagram 48 wagons continued until the summer of 1908, by which time a total of 1300 had been built. To further increase the number in service at a minimal cost an additional 650 wagons were converted to Diagram 48 from earlier 5-plank designs between 1904 and 1911.

Although grouped under a single diagram, there were distinct visual differences between new builds and conversions, the most prominent being the length of the diagonal side braces. All new builds appear to have had the diagonal ironwork extended to the 7th plank, while many (but not all) of the conversions retained the original braces to the 5th plank only