Upon Nationalisation, British Railways inherited a number of different types of Covered Carriage Trucks (CCTs), but all shared a common purpose – they were designed to carry a motor vehicle, and with the growing trend of car ownership, BR sought to boost its inherited fleet by building 822 CCTs to its own design. Classified as the Mk1 CCT, the vehicles were essentially shorter, 4-wheel versions of the bogie Mk1 General Utility Vehicles (GUVs) and the two types shared many common features; from their body profiles, the pair of full width doors at each end, and the pairs of large loading doors on each side which allowed the vehicles to be used to convey much more than motor vehicles – namely parcels, mail and general merchandise. Being express rated, the CCTs could run at speed and were often included as part of passenger trains. Whilst their use to move vehicles declined, particularly from the mid-1960s when BR opted to use only larger vehicles on Motorail services to make loading and unloading more efficient, the CCTs remained in traffic carrying parcels and other goods and more than 800 were still in use towards the end of the 1970s. The last revenue earning vehicles were withdrawn in 1988, but several soldiered on in departmental use, including an example that went to the Railway Technical Centre (RTC), as depicted by this Graham Farish model. Today, many survive at preserved railways where they carry everything from the pushchairs of preservation's youngest enthusiasts to firefighting equipment to respond to lineside fires.