At the peak of their use during the 1950s, British Railways had around a quarter of a million steel mineral wagons. These took over the work of the ageing 7-plank wagons, dominating coal, chalk, sand, stone and iron ore transportation in the '50s and '60s. The most common design was the 16 ton all-steel end door mineral wagon, built for British Railways in their tens of thousands throughout the 1950s.

During the Second World War, the Ministry of Transport (MoT), which later became the Ministry of War Transport (MWT), started ordering 16T steel wagons for use in France and for replacements at home. They had a 9' wheelbase and those built by Charles Roberts & Co. had sloping sides.

Some 60,000 MoT wagons were taken into BR stock in 1948 and the MoT number on each was given a 'B' prefix. In 1951, British Railways acquired a large number of steel mineral wagons from SNCF in France including many of the MoT ones sent over there during the war. With so many contractors building the MoT wagons, there are many design variations. Some were welded, while others were riveted. Some had fabricated doors while, on others, the doors were of pressed steel. In producing the tooling for the Blue Riband models of steel mineral wagons, Bachmann took several of these variations into account and here are seven models that have recently been released:

16T mineral pressed end door MoT brown livery as No.MoT33322 (37-376B)

16T mineral pressed end door in BR rusty grey livery as B100925 (37-377F)

16T mineral MXV wagon in BR late bauxite livery as No.B577541 (37-252D)

16T slope-sided brown mineral as MoT23866 (37-426B)

16T slope-sided brown mineral as MWT 9505 (37-451B)

27T BR grey 'Iron Ore Tippler' as B381818 (37-275E)