Victorian Railways fixed wheel passenger carriages
The first passenger carriages of the Victorian Railways (VR) were fixed-wheel, with a mixture of first- and second-class bodies on either four- or six-wheeled underframes.
Another category was introduced for older cars which allowed them to be used in restricted service; a superscript H added to the class to indicate Holiday traffic - BH.
Ministerial No.1 had its access door at the second panel; the diagram shows that section as the Lavatory, but it was not connected to the water closet and apparently acted more as a vestibule.
The central compartment was converted to a kitchen, and the other two saloons were each split into two 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m) dining tables for six, with a total capacity of 24 diners.
From the data it appears that the class was re-organised in 1886, with many vehicles in service prior to 1886 being scrapped and their numbers left vacant for replacements that were never built.
From 1888 to 1904, as patronage increased and mixed-purpose carriages became less useful, the class was converted, mainly to second-class-only (and a small number to TBO, a second-class van with a booking office installed), though a handful became workmen's sleeping accommodation.
As car designs were being mixed and matched to find a better balance between offering patronage and weight hauled, combination carriages became more common.
The introduction of bogie carriages to country service cascaded stock, allowing older vehicles to be scrapped or converted to works cars.
14 LT 0 cwt 0 qtr (14.22 t) unloaded (ZB) These fixed-wheeled vehicles were the primary group of guard's vans built for the Victorian Railways.
The vans, numbered 25, 27, 33 and 34, were intended for shorter workings in suburban areas, counteracting additional length in more powerful locomotives to allow trains to still fit in sidings and platforms.
From around 1895 the vans had a letter "H" marked on the body sides, indicating that they were to be stored for the most part and used in service only in times of peak traffic.
The program picked up again during World War II, as freight trains were running more often and the existing fleet of vans was no longer sufficient.
The increased axle load was not an issue because all lines had long-since been upgraded to handle the additional strain, and locomotives were far more powerful than they had been when the vans were first introduced in 1886.
[6] A final batch of vans was constructed in 1950-1951, this time with a steel frame and two axles, but also with sheet-metal panelled body sides in place of planks.
Notably, when the Victorian Railways wanted to save money in marking the ends of rarely used sidings, they would place a pair of white timber baulks across the track.
With automatic couplers becoming the new standard, train lengths had increased gradually up to 74 wagons plus van, doubling the slack forces that needed to be absorbed.
Dates of conversion are not recorded, but vans altered were marked with a letter "P" painted in the upper corners, standing for "plural".
[9] The extra speed was made possible by the addition of a false floor consisting of 3 LT 0 cwt 0 qtr (3.05 t) of scrap rails.
The lower centre of gravity also improved the ride quality relative to track state, but did nothing to ameliorate slack forces.
The vans fitted exclusively with automatic couplers were not recoded ZA, because by that time the entire fleet had been made autocoupler-compatible.
This allowed more time to absorb the acceleration and braking forces in the train, and effectively prevented the rough riding caused by the slack action.
A further two vans[10] were allocated to standard gauge, and were used on either end of NN wagons on the ballast trains during construction of the new Albury line.
In 1961, the remnants of van 218 Z (ex 241 D) were modified such that it could be used to test clearances for special loads going to Gippsland, for the Hazelwood Power Station project.
The vans were coded ZB, possibly indicating a planned use on ballast trains where constant stopping and starting could have created derailment risks.
From that year, some of the class had their ballast removed and the ZP designation replaced with ZD, indicating retention of dual couplings but lowering of maximum speed back to 50 mph (80 km/h), for freight work and possibly as transition vehicles within workshop limits.
In the 1910 renumbering, the WS class letters became simply W. The vehicles were re-numbered in the process which makes research from the Diagram Books difficult.
One method of achieving this was to remove staff members from a lot of small stations; to compensate, ticket sales were made on the train.
[10] Compared to the huge number of cars that were constructed, only a handful have survived with preservation railways (not counting the plethora of privately owned bodies around country Victoria, used as barns and the like).
Similarly, a display at Coal Creek, Korumburra, includes 334 ZL along with some passenger cars, K 169, a pair of QR open wagons and the frame from Oil Tank 45.
Carriage set 40 X, 309 Y, 69 YZ was first restored to operating condition in the early 1950s as a display piece for the 1954 Victorian Railways Centenary.
