York Carriage Works, photographs

This collection features posed photographs of newly completed carriages and wagons, together with interior views.

The collection is part listed, by carriage type, with reference prints of most of the collection available for consultation in the Reading Room

The first railway workshops were established in York in 1842 and in 1865 York Wagon Works was built by the North Eastern Railway Company for vehicle repair. In 1884 a new carriage works was opened on the Holgate Road site and here vehicles were built for the NER and, eventually, the LNER and British Railways. The works was extensively modernised in the 1980s, producing carriages and both diesel and electric multiple units for British Rail and overseas orders. These included vehicles for the Docklands Light Railway, the South East Region 'Networkers', the Strasbourg Eurotram and electrics for Taiwan. The works became part of British Rail Engineering Ltd and was then sold to Asea Brown Boveri Ltd, but closed in 1996 through a lack of orders following the privatisation of British Rail. The American Thrall Car Manufacturing Company now plans to re-open the works for wagon construction.