Railways were invented to carry goods, primarily minerals. By the time of nationalisation, British Rails role as 'common carrier' whereby they were obliged to carry any type of freight traffic offered to them - had fully developed.

The success of the first volume of British Railways Wagons was due not only to its broad coverage of BR wagon types, but also the photographs and dimensioned drawings, which were specifically intended to benefit the modeller. Unfortunately, space constraints meant that the drawings were included at the expense of further photographs, so in volume 2 the opportunity has been to taken to include a large number of additional illustrations of the wagon types covered in Volume 1, together with new sections covering Departmental wagons and machines, non-passenger-+carrying coaching stock, and brake-vans. There is also a fascinating chapter with freight train incidents and derailments.More than 275 photographs and drawings have been selected, supported by authoritative text by two retired railwaymen whose working lives involved in-depth and first-hand experience of moving goods by rail.