McAlpine Flat Bed Wagon

This flat bed wagon was built specifically for the McAlpine civil engineering company, as marked on its cast iron hub caps. The manufacturer isn’t known, but McAlpine had many such wagons in use on their large engineering projects, including Tilbury Docks, the Wembley Stadium complex, and several of the large dams built in the years after the Second World War.

As modern machinery took over from the temporary on-site railways once used on projects like these, the wagon was moved to Sir William McAlpine’s estate near Henley-on-Thames, where he held invited open days for visitors to view his extensive collection of railway memorabilia, carriages and wagons. Following one of these visits, one of our members approached him to ask whether the railway might have a wagon for restoration. His answer was “yes” — and in fact two wagons were collected before his untimely death. After a respectful period, we approached his widow to ask what we owed, and were told by Lady Judy McAlpine that we could have them “in Bill’s memory”.