Origins
These four-wheeled brake vans were used in conjunction with the four-wheeled stock, the majority of which was not braked. Upon introduction of the first bogie coaches from Brown Marshalls these gradually became obsolete and subsequently saw various uses, the company being renowned for not throwing away anything that was potentially useful. The replacement M.N.R. vans (see below) supposedly had the ironwork supplied by the Swansea Wagon Co., but there is no proof of this.
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Lookout Duckets
All vans were built with lookout duckets; on the I.M.R. vans these were at the Douglas end whilst on the M.N.R. versions they were at the Ramsey end, in keeping with each company's policy of having stock turned to denote shed allocation similarly to the locomotives which were chimney towards Douglas if shedded out of Peel, or Port Erin. On most vans duckets were replaced by six inch planks, but on E.2 (later re-used at Santon Station as a store) the ducket space was panelled over.
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Livery Details
When delivered these vehicles all carried the standard passenger stock livery of purple lake as the above photograph testifies; they later carried the standard goods livery of all over grey, whilst some carried the wartime two-tone brown until scrapping. Any idiosyncrasies that are known are included in the body of the text below.

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Ballasalla Bonfire
Any vehicles noted below as having a scrapping date of 1974 denotes the date of the "Ballasalla Bonfire" when many surplus items were disposed of, but not all vehicles were burnt, some being scrapped immediately before. The goods yard at Ballasalla at this time had the appearance of a mass graveyard for a lot of the railway's surplus non-passenger stock. At least one van boy escaped this fate and was removed for storage in the northwest of the island where it remains to this day.

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Class Details

The following pages detail brief biographies and relevant details of each member of this class, please navigate these pages by using the "prev" and "next" buttons at the foot of this page; any discrepencies and/or historical details that may be known about each member of this class may be notified to the website manager, whose details appear on the contacts page of this site.