Unlike the broad-gauge, the Victorian Railways' 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow-gauge network never had four-wheeled trucks (aside from a handful of trollies).
has started a process of reclassifying all previously double-letter classified goods stock back to its original identities.
This is in recognition of the adopted Era of Significance for the Railway, which covers period 1900–1930, during which time they mostly had the double letter coding.
When assembled into the open wagon format these wagons were designed to have the same capacity (weight and volume) as a normal broad gauge four-wheel open truck, to make load transferring easier at the interchange stations—Colac, Wangaratta, Upper Ferntree Gully and Moe.
The superscript "N" changed to regular script in the goods vehicle recoding following the auto coupler conversion in 1926.
Some of these trucks were fitted with seats and frameworks supporting shelter to cater for holiday traffic on the Gembrook line.
Over the years, a number of NQRs were provided with removable wood and steel frameworks with canvas roof canopies and side curtains, and internal seating to supplement the rest of the passenger stock during busy holiday periods.
Most of the class then remained in service until the early 1950s, when the four VR lines closed and mass scrappings of narrow-gauge stock began.
Most were scrapped; 13 NMM is used by Puffing Billy on wood trains, and 6 NM was recently rescued from a farm and is currently in storage awaiting restoration.
The standard louvred truck 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.
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.
[citation needed] In June 1910, it was decided that a truck for the transportation of explosives would be useful; probably for the Moe-Walhalla line as Walhalla was a gold-mining town and the rail line had been built from Moe to provide a faster means of transportation than bullock teams from the sailing boats from Melbourne to Port Albert/Sale via Heyfield.
However, in late March 1911 the wagon had been converted to entirely general goods use, with the partition removed and a recoding to NH 1, the "H" in the class being a reference to the broad-gauge H covered trucks then in use.
In October 1899 a single insulated truck, NTT 1, was built for the transportation of goods that needed to be kept cold, such as raw meat and dairy products.
[5] The primary example of goods vehicle is the acquisition from the Tasmanian Government Railways of a number of ballast hopper trucks.
However, unlike those examples, it is likely that the Victorian Railways would have retained the "NNN" code instead of simplifying to "NN", because there was already a broad-gauge ballast vehicle of that classification.