Product Description

Rapido 967602 RCH 1907 Peaked Roof Salt Wagon Chance & Hunt Ltd. No. 171

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The UK has been a major producer of salt for thousands of years, but Cheshire is the epicentre of the nation’s production. The ancient salt marshes and rock salt deposits were rich pickings for entrepreneurial business owners. Its history is so ingrained in British culture that the towns where it is produced were mentioned in the Domesday book of 1086, being referred to as “The Wiches”.

Salt is an excellent preservative, so it has been used in the transport of food both nationally and internationally and was sent in huge quantities to the deep water ports around the country for exporting perishables. Dairy salt was even exported as far as New Zealand right through to the 1950s. The export of salt helped put Liverpool on the map, hundreds of years before the Beatles even picked up a guitar, or Ken Dodd waved his tickle stick.

To protect the salt in transit, most companies maintained a personal fleet of privately owned railway wagons, so that the load was protected from the weather, and to prevent spillage, these were usually vans or enclosed wagons. In part, this was due to the variable quality and condition of the covered vans that were owned by most railway companies. One leaky wagon could dissolve an entire shipment before it even arrived at its destination.

This is why many salt wagons adopted a peaked roof shape. Rain would run off instantly, thus increasing the protection of the salt further.

With the Railway Clearing House managing the flow of wagons between railway companies and standardising mileage rates, they were a logical party to be involved in the transfer of salt.

The RCH had implemented wagon design standards that railway companies and wagon builders had to adhere to if they wanted to be a member of their scheme. The 1907 variant used common underframe components across many different body styles and types, including salt wagons. Salt is well known for speeding up the effects of rust, so many of these salt vans had wooden underframes.

Several wagon builders would produce salt vans that had this underframe, and they soon became a common sight across the network. As these were privately owned, the majority of them would be emblazoned with eye-catching and brightly coloured liveries.

Surviving from the pre-grouping era, these wagons even managed to avoid the wagon pooling of WW2 and remained in their bright colours right through to the days of the Nationalisation of the railways, despite the majority of other rolling stock receiving a grey or brown livery.

Specifications:-

• RCH 1907 Spec Peaked-Roof Salt Van
• Chance & Hunt Ltd. No. 171
• Salt van with peaked roof
• Oil 116 axleboxes
• Single-sided brakes
• Angled V hangers
• Plain tapered buffers
• Split-spoke wheels running in metal bearings
• High level of detail above and below the floor line
• High quality livery application
• NEM coupler pockets
• 1:76 scale (OO gauge)