British Railways had around a quarter of a million steel mineral wagons. These took over the work of the ageing private owner 7-plank wagons, dominating coal, stone and iron ore transportation in the '50s and '60s. The standard design of all standard designs 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) 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 at Nationalisation 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, Bachmann took several of these variations into account.

The building of the 16T all-steel mineral wagons finished in 1959. One particularly common version had an opening flap above the side doors, known as a 'London Traders' flap, which we refer to here by the more commonly used name 'top flap'..