"550 NINE-TON GOODS WAGONS -- GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY.

The Great Northern Railway Company invites tenders for 550 goods wagons. The accompanying engraving illustrates their construction. The following is a copy of the specification. The general arrangement of the wagon is shown in the engravings above. The body to be 15ft. long by 7ft 6in. wide outside, and 3ft. deep inside exclusive of  ½ in. coping iron; to be carried on four wheels, 3ft. 2 ½ in. diameter at centre of tread, placed 9ft. 6in. centre to centre; the whole of the underframe to be of St. Clair white oak; the floor, sides, and end boarding of best St. Petersburg deals; the whole to be of the best quality, dry, sound, and free from knots and shakes. All the wrought ironwork where not otherwise specified to be of the best hammered scrap iron, cleanly forged, and where fitted to woodwork to be bedded on white lead; the draw chains to be made of best Yorkshire chain iron; axles and tires to be of best Bessemer steel of approved English manufacture; springs to be made of the beat spring steel; all the bolts and nuts to be screwed to Whitworth’s standard, and all the nuts  hexagonal; all the bolt bolts inside of wagon to be countersunk flush, and corners well rounded off washer plates."

This tender document from 1882 is for 550 open wagons for the Great Northern Railway contains detailed information on the construction of these wagons, the materials to be used, the livery and lettering style. The lettering style is interesting because it precedes the generally known styles used to represent older vehicles. These were: either "G" "NORTHERN" "R" arranged over three planks or the large letters  "G" "N"  on the side of the vehicle (These styles can be seen in the images which date from the late 1890's).. The GNR generally built its own rolling stock. This open tender is an indication of the demand for goods vehicles during this period.

The essential design of this open wagon did not change during the entire lifetime of the company. Over the years, the wagons design was modified to include improved brakes and other detail changes but the principal dimensions remained the same. There were numerous modifications within this group of vehicles.  However in 1903, the GNR classified approxinately 30,000 of these wagons into just two categories.. The remaining stock of goods vehicles of all types owned by the GNR was approximatley 8,000 vehicles and of these the most numerous were ordinary covered goods (approx. 1,600),  flat wagons (approx 1,000), "colwick" open wagons (approx 900)., timber trucks( approx 900) and  cattle trucks (approx 700). In 1903, there were officially 29 types of open wagons, 13 types of covered vans, 5 types of cattle trucks, 3 types of timber truck, 7 types of brake vans (1000 vehicles) and two types of crane wagons.