Report content as inappropriate
Original Text (Annotation: EPW004062 / 203823)
'
A great variety of mostly open wagons, both company and private owner. This one is from the London Brighton and South Coast, but others from the Great Central, the Great Northern, Great Eastern and the London and South Western can be seen close by. It is difficult to identify any vehicles from the local Furness Railway, but there are several that could be London and North Western, including a goods brake van next to the over bridge, and others from the Midland Railway. The picture shows the way that by 1920 the dominance of 'own' company wagons in any pre-1914-18 War railway scene had been much reduced.
During the 1914-18 War most of each of the British railway companies rolling stock was allocated to a pool of 'common user' stock, in fact unless specially marked any wagon would be assumed to be such. When a 'common user' wagon worked onto another company's system they were permitted to retain the 'foreign' wagon and use it as required. The Railway Clearing House then determined any payment to be made to the parent company. Occasionally a rake of empty wagons might be formed and returned to the parent company but in general the stock remained fairly balanced. The common user system reduced the empty wagon mileage from 60% of the total before the war to only 20% of the total by 1918. This was self evidently a commercial success and the scheme remained in operation right up to the nationalisation of the railways in 1948, when the concept became redundant all wagons (including private owner wagons) belonging to the new British Railways.
'