The Victorian Railways used a variety of covered railway wagons for the transport of all manner of goods. This page covers the history and development of the various classes, and how they changed through their lives.
| Manufacturer | Victorian Railways |
|---|---|
| Built at | Newport Workshops |
| Replaced | Each other |
| Operator | Victorian Railways |
| Line(s) served | All |
| Specifications | |
| Gauge | Broad |
Note: most vans covered in passenger car pages i.e. CE, BCE vans in the E car page.
Starting from 1862, the Victorian Railways obtained a fleet of four-wheeled vans designed for the transportation of explosive powders and compounds, as these were needed for construction and mining among other activities. With a wooden body and underframe and a capacity of five tons each, the first five vans were constructed by Wright & Sons in England and delivered to Melbourne. Classed PV and numbered 1 to 5, these were the only vehicles in the VR fleet available for explosives transportation until 1872-73, when more wagons were constructed by Rawlings in 1873. They were given numbers 6 to 11.
A further expansion to the fleet came in 1882 when the Victorian Railways built van PV 12 at their own Williamstown Workshops. This design proved successful, as in 1884 another twelve wagons were constructed by Pickles & Co., with an identical design to PV 12 and built at the same location. These were the last vans to be built without Westinghouse brakes, and the entire fleet was modified in 1910-1912 to match the new safety standards, along with other modifications. Interestingly, while the original vans were classed PV, the fleet is referred to simply as the P class from 1886 onwards.
In 1910, van P 10 had its underframe replaced with iron most likely as a trial. Then, from 1911 to 1921, vans 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 21 and 23 were scrapped, with parts recycled to construct new wagons with the same numbers and purpose at the Newport Workshops. The new wagons had Westinghouse brakes from the start, and it is probable that these vans resembled 12 through 23 although records do exist of another design.
From 1900 and for about half a century after, explosives were also transported from Deer Park to Laverton; at Laverton the contents of the explosives vans were transferred by a 2 ft-gauge tramway over to Trugannina Reserve for storage, then transportation to ships via smaller vessels. This complex procedure was necessary as explosive compounds were not allowed to come within a mile of Melbourne's main port.
The first proper scrappings (without recycling) occurred in 1928, with another seven scrapped up to 1944. In 1948, wagons 1, 2, 3, 4 and 20 were stored at Tottenham Yard, with the entire remaining fleet save P 5 scrapped/recycled in 1953-54. P 5 was instead converted to van H 17 in 1950 (for departmental use) and by 1960 it had been sold to Yarragon.
From 1954, a new fleet of P explosives wagons was constructed. These were very different to their predecessors in appearance, and were the first vans to break the trend of a five ton limit, with capacity for 10 tons or 15,000 pounds of explosive material. Like some of their predecessors, at least some wagons were constructed with recycled underframes and body frames, all metal, but with new plywood sides. The vans had automatic couplers and Westinghouse brakes from new, as was the standard at the time. Vans 1 through 25 were built in 1954-55, and the fleet was almost doubled in 1958-59 with the final van, P 45 (although it is thought that vans P 46 to P 51 were also constructed at this time, reliable records have not been found). The entire fleet was painted a bright red (different to the then-new Passenger Red) with a large yellow area declaring the explosive contents on all sides, and this made the wagons stand out in a train of brown wagons.
Some wagons had their centre side-sills strengthened in the mid 1960's. In 1979-81 the surviving wagons had their load limits were altered from 15,000 lbs to 7,500 kg in line with the metrification of the Victorian Railways, and around the same time signs were added relating to the allowed contents of the vans and safe handling of same. The fleet lasted intact through to the late mid-late 1970s, with scrappings, withdrawals and sales mostly occurring in the early 1980s although no records exist for about half the fleet.
Today, vans P 8, 22 and 43 exist at the Victorian Goldfields Railway although only no.22 is operational. Also, the bodies of vans 5, 13 and 30 are used by the Puffing Billy Preservation Society for storage at Emerald, while up to five other vans may exist on private property at Ballarat, Bendigo, Leongatha, Yarraville and Williamstown.
In 1893 the Victorian Railways decided that new wagons were required for the transportation of corpses, as the existing arrangements were unsatisfactory.
To fill the need as quickly as possible, two mail vans (E 1 & E 2) and a carriage truck (G 24) were converted to hearse vans C 1, 2 and 3, each 15 feet long with 20 separate 1'7"-wide compartments over two levels. The trio, when not running to Springvale or Fawkner cemeteries, were kept in the Mortuary Dock off Batman Avenue at Flinders Street Station; this siding was accessible from what is now known as Platform 13. Between 1902 and 1903 another six vans, numbered 4 to 9 were constructed. The new vans were also four-wheelers, about 18 feet long with room for fourteen corpses on two levels. The design was somewhat unusual in that the outer twelve slots had a single door, but the centre slot on each level had two half-width doors. The compartments ranged in size, with the four outermost slots 2'3½" wide, the two centre slots 3'1" wide and the other eight slots only 2'3" wide. Also in 1903, vans C 2 and C 3 was scrapped, although a new C 3 was converted from Mail Van E 3 in 1906. Vans C 1 and C 3 (the second) were scrapped in 1909.
In the 1910 recoding the remaining vans, C 4 through C 9, were renumbered to J 1 through J 6 in the same order. However, by 1912 their underframes were wearing out and capacity requirements were changing, so the six vans were lifted from their underframes, and the bodies were cut and merged together to give four new six-wheeled wagons of about 26 feet long, each capable of conveying up to 20 corpses at a time. Vans J 4 & 5 created J 7, J 2 became J 8, J 1 & 3 gave J 9 and J 6 became J 10. It is likely that either the new J 8 and J 10 were extended with newly-built components, or that they used leftover parts from the other conversions. It is interesting to note that overall, the fleet capacity was reduced by a total of four compartments.
When electrification onto the cemetery lines rolled around in the early 1920s, the four vans were provided with through cables to allow them to be included between a Swing Door M and D set. A daily electric visitors and corpse train ran to Fawkner from 1920 to 1939, and to Springvale Cemetery until 1943. Until the end, the vans were averaging around 2,000 miles per year, which equates to 100 trips per year on the 20-30 mile round journey.
The vans hung around for about six years following the cancellation of corpse trains, until they were finally withdrawn in 1949; at this time the electric through-cabling gear was removed, and the vans were scrapped or sold in 1953.
In 1990, the Fawkner Cemetery restored a J van using a body found at Romsey and an underframe purchased from the railways. The van was restored to cosmetic accuracy and numbered 7, although the body number was never known. The van now sits adjacent to Platform 2 at Fawkner station.
For the transportation of milk, meat and other products that needed to be kept cold, the Victorian Railways developed a class of bogie box vans with thick insulation intended to keep the contents of the wagons cold. Initially, refrigeration was achieved by having slots in the sides and ends of the wagons, allowing airflow when the train was moving. This was the design used for the thirty-one TT class vans built between 1889 and 1891. The first wagon of this class had three single-doors per side and was used exclusively for milk traffic, while wagons 2 through 31 had two sets of double doors per side. The last of these, no.31, was modified in 1891 for fish traffic. All vans carried roughly 20 tons of goods, and the code TT was probably selected as at the time there were a handful of T four-wheeled box vans fitted with meat-carrying facilities (see above under T/TH), and at the VR at the time used double-codes to indicate bogies.
In 1939 vans 14 and 17 were damaged in a derailment. The bodies were scrapped, but the underframes were used on R 11, an overhead maintenance van, and Q 27, a Pintsch Gas transport wagon.
In the late 1920s vans 15, 16 and 18 began use as Mail baggage vehicles with their capacity downrated to 15 tons each. From 1941 they gained high-speed bogies for express train running, and in 1956 15 and 18 were recoded to TP, then to BP only a year later (TT 16 went on to become a BB van). That is why the steel vans BP above run from 3 to 102. The two vans were scrapped in November 1960.
Between the mid 1930's and late 1950s, about half the remaining TT vans were recoded to BB, then BA classes for general goods, while the remainder went on to HH duty as breakdown or loco vans at places like Ararat, Benalla, Maryborough, Jolimont, Newport, North Melbourne and Traralgon.
Vans 2, 3 and 12 also stand out; van 2 became a BB, then a crane crawler wagon QD, then a sleeper discharge wagon VZCA. Van 3 had a similar life, although it spent some time as a BA wagon between the BB and QD stages. Finally, van 12 became a BB, BA, then HD wagon despite that code normally being reserved for four-wheeled wagons, and finally it became VZAA, a fire attack wagon.
Not long after the construction of the last TT van, a four-wheel van with a similar purpose was constructed. These were lettered T, and the wagons already existing and called T were relettered to TH to make way for the new class.
The first vans were weighed twelve tons, and were intended to have a mansard-style roof. However, this was altered to the constant-radius design before construction began. The vans were kept cool by their insulation, as well as a 2'1" deep well suspended from the roof of the wagon, which was filled with salted, crushed ice at Melbourne Yard on a regular basis (What a Journey - Tom Yates). 191 vans were constructed of this type. The vans were painted in standard VR wagon red, but their roofs were in a lighter brown; this was probably to make them stand out in consists when being viewed from above.
Starting from October 1909, the design was changed to a fifteen ton design with three axles, but otherwise construction was identical and continued up to wagon number 417 in 1924.
Between 1929 and 1934, it is believed that vans 121-191 and 369-392 were converted to the TFM class; the differences being only two ice hatches placed closer to the ends of the wagons, and modifications to allow more meat to be held inside the wagons.
In the mid 1930's, the wagon couplings were switched from hook-and-chain to autocoupler type. When these conversions took place, the six-wheeled vans lost their middle axles and TFM wagons were converted back to standard T design.
By the 1950s the T vans were starting to wear out, so a new fleet of 50 aluminium-constructed vans were added, numbered 420 through 469. These had angled roofs and a capacity of 15½ tons, with room for up to 0.8 tons of crush ice and walls 6.0625 inches thick, insulated with "Onazate". They were initially noticeable in consists because they not painted above the underframes (which were in VR wagon red), although by the mid 1960's they were painted all over in wagon red. Interestingly, van 422 was of a different design to the other 49 wagons in this batch, with thinner walls and internal bracing to compensate; this could have been a trial or caused by material shortages. At some point, van 421 had its doors made wider for palletisation, although it is not know whether this was from new or a later modification.
In 1958 two wagons, T 297 and 283, had passenger bogies added and were renumbered to TP 1 and 2, for express running from Melbourne to Mildura on the "fruity". In 1959, a further three wagons (393, 381 and 356) were converted to TP 3 through 5. At time of conversion, TPs 1, 2 and 3 had single-width doors added at each end of both sides, but TPs 4 and 5 retained only the centre doors provided on regular T vans. In the late 1970s the vans were fitted with "FOOD TRANSPORT ONLY" signs as health regulations required. The vans were intended to become the VRPY class in the 1979 recoding, but this never happened despite being indicted as such in the 1983 Working Time Table. Vans 1, 2 and 3 were out of service by 1983, and vans 4 and 5 followed the year after.
Other wagons of note are T 13 and 36 which were destroyed in a fire at the Government Cool Stores in 1937, T 6, which became wagon H1 for way and works fumigation in 1954, Ts 29, 167 and 181 which apparently swapped identities a few times, 20-34 with a coconut fibre floor, 35-40 with Luplan's Carbo Paint from new and 41-48 which were painted in Zinc White when new, T 103 which became a workmans' sleeper in 1957, Ts 140 and 143 which swapped identities in 1960, HD 217 and 222 which were converted to HD 238 and HD 239 respectively, T 304 which was converted to flat wagon K2 in 1978, HR 5 in 1980 and HZE 231 in 1985 and T 444 and 463 which had their floors modified for palletised butter traffic in February 1971.
As the Victorian Railways lost its hold on the freight market the use of the vans declined, and by the mid 1970's many had been sold or scrapped with 79 underframes converted to KMQ flat wagons for container use. The class was essentially gone by the mid 1980's, with T 329 and T 378 the last to be marked Off Register in 1990.
Just like the broad gauge railways, the narrow gauge lines required covered vans. Over the course of about a decade, sixteen vans were built for this purpose.
The standard box-van design for the Victorian narrow-gauge lines, the NUU vehicles were constructed in three batches; the first seven from 1899 to 1901, an eighth in 1906 and the last six in 1911, for a total class of fourteen. They looked very similar to the U vans of the Broad Gauge, although interestingly, two photographs of NUU 1 show that its body may have been white for some time.
In 1926 the class was relettered to simply NU, with no changes to numbers. NU 4 was scrapped in 1938, but otherwise the class remained intact until 1954, when seven members (2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12) were sold to Coulston & Hyder, who dispersed the wagons among locations on the Wangarrata to Whitfield line. As of 1996, vans 7 and 12 were at Moyhu, while van 11 was destroyed by fire in 1978. Wagons 6 and 1 were scrapped in 1957 and 1958 respectively, while in 1954 van 13 was recorded as being sold to the Puffing Billy Preservation Society. In 1977, the remaining vans 3, 10 and 14 were handed over to the Emerald Tourist Railway Board, and removed from Victorian Railways records.
It is worth noting that from 1972 to 1977, van NU 10 was lettered as NW 10, presumably for the storage of tools rather than for general goods.
Also in 1899, an insulated van NTT 1 was built for the transportation of goods that needed to be kept cold, such as raw meat. Like NUU 1, it was painted white from new. It's walls were 5¼ inches thick.
The wagon was relettered to simply NT in 1926, but little else is known about the wagon's history until 1988, when it was found and placed in the Menzies Creek museum. Today, it is used at Belgrave Station for storage.
In June 1910, it was decided that a van for the transportation of explosives would be useful; probably for the Moe-Walhalla line as Walhalla was a gold-mining town. NPH 1 was built on the standard design of underframe as most other narrow gauge stock, but because it was not anticipated that explosives traffic would require use of the entire wagon, it was partitioned to give 4 tons capacity for explosives, while the remaining 6 tons was for general goods. Unlike the NU and NT classes, this meant that the van had four doors total.
However, by 1911 the wagon had been converted to entirely general goods use, with the partition removed and a recoding to NH 1. It gained autocouplers in 1928, and was scrapped twenty-six years later. By 1988, the vehicle had been found and was placed into the Museum at Menzies Creek.
In general, box and louvre vans have been painted in Victorian Railways Wagon Red livery, with varying sizes of VR symbol on the sides depending on the timeframe. From the 1980s onwards, the vans converted to D series were painted in the colours of the passenger trains they were running with. Further, B van 393? was painted yellow sometime in the 1980s, and its body still exists in this form at South Dynon today.
As this article covers such an extensive range of wagons, it follows that a large range of model railway and train simulator items are available.
In HO Scale, Steam Era Models produces plastic kits of the B Boxvan, T refrigerated van (no's 1-417 only), U/UB/UP/UF louvre vans and P explosives van. Austrains also produces the B vans as a ready-to-run product.
Auscision Models is working on a release of the long U and T vans, as well as the BB/BP/BMX/BMF/VBAX/VBAY/VBPY/D vans, due for release in 2012 in two and four car packs and for inclusion individually in N passenger car sets.
TrainOrama also has a range of VLX/VLCX wagons.
As for train simulators, the Trainz program by Auran has a range of user-created content, including the B, U and T (long timber and steel, not short timber) four-wheeler vans as well as the VLCX, VBCW and VP vans. Most of those are fitted with automatic coupling and brake shoes, optional weathering and random wagon numbers.
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