A GWR long wheelbase (16' 0") ROTANK wagon, designed to carry a 4 or 6 wheel road trailer.
The wagon and tanker were cosmetically restored and repainted in the summer of 2021.
H & G Simonds Ltd was a brewery founded in Reading, Berkshire, England in 1785 by William Blackall Simonds. The company amalgamated with Courage & Barclay in 1960 and dropped the Simonds name after ten years. Eventually the firm became part of Scottish & Newcastle who sold the brands to Wells & Young's Brewery in 2007 and closed the Reading brewery three years later.
Simonds supplied many of the railways in southern England. By the 1880s, Simonds was the largest brewery in Reading. After the First World War, they expanded by acquisition, purchasing local breweries as well as others in places such as Bristol and Devonport.
By 1938, Simonds' was producing just over one percent of all beer brewed in England and Wales. The brewery made extensive use of the canal to deliver its wares, but the railway was also an important form of transport, with the brewery having its own siding off the Coley branch line.
For more photographs of the Didcot Railway Centre please click here:
www.jhluxton.com/Railways-and-Tramways/Railway-Museums/Gr... 