During the 1930s decline in livestock traffic on the railways, the GWR rebuilt some of their cattle wagons as fruit vans. British Railways inherited 11,089 cattle wagons in 1948 and, despite the continuing decline in traffic, carried on building them up until 1954. 2,300 of these were built at Swindon. There were soon many redundant vans and they were used for other purposes such as the transportation of vegetables. The last two cattle wagons survived until 1975 when they were rescued by the National Railway Museum.