Until the mid-1880s, the general merchandise wagons of the Great Eastern Railway had high rounded ends (‘half-moons’ in GE parlance) intended to help support sheets to protect goods in transit from inclement weather. Several thousand examples were built fr0m the 1850s (under the antecedent Eastern Counties Railways) onwards , and by 1878 accounted for 58% of stock owned by the GER.

Over the years new batches were given progressively modern features which then cascaded down to earlier builds as they came into works for examination or repair. All were built with side doors, most had outside timber framing, and individual angle irons held the corners together. Later builds had conventional corner plates with the wooden timber framing, but the final batches incorporated outside iron diagonal bracing and knees to which the sides were secured. Early examples had no brakes until the 1870s when single-side wooden brakes with one lever acting on two wheels were introduced. These were gradually replaced from the mid-1880s onwards with iron brake blocks . During the 1870s self-contained sprung buffers gradually replaced dead buffers, but from the early 1880s standard short buffer guides were fitted to new builds. Both of these types were bolted to square wooden packing pieces to increase their length to 1? 7?. From the early 1880s running efficiency was improved by fitting Worsdell’s Type A grease axleboxes.

The livery was standard Great Eastern slate grey (Humbrol 67 or Phoenix Precision P.505 for modellers). Lettering was hand painted in white but stencilled on older wagons as per the photographs...

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