Carriages
The North British carriage stock in the early years of the Company was typical of the period, being based on coaching practice. The Company gained a reputation for the poor quality of its early passenger carriages due, in part, to the use of unseasoned timber in their construction as a result of the high demand for carriage stock by competing Companies in the railway boom of the 1840s. Throughout its existence, the Company used contractors to supply its carriages, in addition to those it constructed at its own works, firstly at St Margarets and latterly at Cowlairs. The illustration above shows a typical third class four wheeler of the 1870s, this particular example having been built by the Ashbury company. These vehicles lasted into the 1920s on short commuter trains. Six wheeled vehicles were used more extensively from about the mid-1870s up to the mid 1890s, when the first bogie stock started to appear and rapidly became the company’s standard from then on.
The links below will take you to pages with further information about carriages. The NBR had numerous types of carriage, therefore we have split the list into sections.