1536 is just one example of the hundreds of tank wagons built by Charles Roberts & Company of Wakefield, England for various railways across Britain and Ireland. Though many were built for mainline railway companies, most belonged to private businesses – 1536 is one of the latter, though we haven’t yet been able to identify which business that was!

Unfortunately the history of goods wagons is rarely documented as well as that of carriages or locomotives. We know little about 1536 other than the fact it was built in 1922 and arrived at DCDR in 1999, after spending an unknown amount of time in storage somewhere on the NIR network. After the Second World War, private companies started closing their internal railway systems and so it is likely that, at some point, 1536 was sold to the Ulster Transport Authority, who would then pass it on to Northern Ireland Railways in 1968. We suspect the wagon’s final use was some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

1536 has been in storage since it arrived at DCDR, along with most of our wagons that can’t be used on our engineering trains. However, though it may not carry passengers or be useful for track maintenance work, it is still part of Ireland’s railway story. We hope in the future to establish some kind of facility for the exhibition of goods vehicles, at which point we will be able to cosmetically restore 1536.