Catalogue description The Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company, photographs

Listed, with prints available for consultation by special request. There are no original negatives, but copies can be produced to order.

Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company Ltd

• Railway transport
• Transport engineering

The Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company Ltd was established in 1860 to take advantage of a growing market for railway wagons, building vehicles for both the railway operators and for private concerns. Companies which regularly used the railways to transport freight normally owned their own wagons and the Gloucester works was well-placed to serve the needs of collieries in South Wales, the Midlands and the Forest of Dean and soon built up a lucrative business supplying mineral wagons. In 1867 the company received its first overseas orders, from India and Russia, and even set up a temporary assembly plant in Riga, Lithuania. The Gloucester works then expanded its output to include carriages and road vehicles, and during the Boer War produced ambulance trains. In the First World War vehicles were built to replace damaged French rolling stock, and in the 1920s the works supplied coaches for the London underground. The company also manufactured buses and everything from handcarts to a luxurious railway carriage built for the Maharajah of Indore. During the Second World War Churchill tanks were built at the Gloucester works, together with mines, shells and aircraft components. In post-war years there were major orders from Canada and Australia, whilst the company also produced freight bogies, wagons and tankers for British Railways.

The works closed in the 1960s, although the company name was still in use in the 1990s.