This is great - full of character. All wagons should have a brake lever as long as the wheelbase.

Quote

I think they may have been threaded for an eyebolt. Perhaps a bar was pegged across the wagon to chock the wheels of the load ?

Carriage trucks around this time made use of bars going across to chock the wheels, fixed to longitudinal rails in the way you suggest, so that seems quite possible. See for example this GWR open carriage truck of 1888:

https://www.westernthunder.co.uk/threads/v2-4-wheel-parcel-van.10709/post-259911

Do you have a livery in mind for the furniture van?
 

Nick.

Agreed Magmouse, I think I will make up a chocking bar. 

For the van I will just go for something anonymous. Very little of it will be seen. 

I know that people have made very fine models of vans on wagons in the past with wonderfully painted liveries. However I don't think they would have travelled like that. Those vans were expensive, especially when full of the house contents of affluent people. Travelling a long distance across several railway companies I think the owners would want a proper sheet over the whole thing. 

Makes sense to me anyway 

I’ve been collecting pictures of furniture vans, as I plan to make one, and a couple of containers (‘lift vans’) in the same livery. Mostly the photos show the vans in the street, or loaded on a wagon in a goods yard (and so potentially before any sheeting was applied). There is though a photo here of a van in transit, unsheeted:

Of course, if you want/need to avoid a complex lettering job, then sheeting is the way forward!

Nick.

Ah yes , I did read through that very good thread. The comment was made that although the van looked clean it wouldn't stay that way for long running just behind the loco. 

I think I will build it up sheeted and see how it looks to the eye. If it looks wrong there is a brass kit for a van from dart castings. 

These things seem to be all the rage. 

All the photos I've seen of furniture vans or containers on wagons show them unsheeted, including on trains, not just in yards. On the other hand, I don't know how many sheeted ones have gone unrecognised for what they were!