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Victorian Railways iced vans
The Victorian Railways used a variety of air-cooled and iced wagons or refrigerated vans 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.
For the transportation of milk, meat and other products that needed to be kept cold, in 1881 the Victorian Railways developed a small fleet of boxvans with a similar design to the H type boxvans. At least 19 were built by 1886, although records are incomplete. More wagons may have been constructed, but wagons which had been scrapped or converted by 1886 were not included in that year's register.
In 1887 four vans, numbers 6, 7, 8 and 16, were fitted with long bars inside the roof, for the purpose of hanging meat while being transported. Around the same time, a note in the rollingstock registers indicates that vans 14 and 15 were fitted with "side springs", although it is not known what this meant.
With the introduction of the new, upgraded type of insulated T vans for 1894, these vans were recoded to TH.
Most vans had been fitted only with a Westinghouse train pipe, not the full brake apparatus, between 1889 and 1892. The full brake equipment was not installed until the 1909-1910 period. From 1910 to 1923 the class was progressively withdrawn, with the last, TH 11, scrapped on 20 December 1923.
As four-wheeled wagons were not always sufficient to handle the large amount of traffic needed, a fleet of bogie box vans with thick insulation was also developed. 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 long tons (20.3 t; 22.4 short 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 long tons (15.2 t; 16.8 short 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. Van BP1 was painted blue (and presumably with gold stripes) by 7 September 1958. The two vans were scrapped in November 1960.
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Victorian Railways iced vans
The Victorian Railways used a variety of air-cooled and iced wagons or refrigerated vans 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.
For the transportation of milk, meat and other products that needed to be kept cold, in 1881 the Victorian Railways developed a small fleet of boxvans with a similar design to the H type boxvans. At least 19 were built by 1886, although records are incomplete. More wagons may have been constructed, but wagons which had been scrapped or converted by 1886 were not included in that year's register.
In 1887 four vans, numbers 6, 7, 8 and 16, were fitted with long bars inside the roof, for the purpose of hanging meat while being transported. Around the same time, a note in the rollingstock registers indicates that vans 14 and 15 were fitted with "side springs", although it is not known what this meant.
With the introduction of the new, upgraded type of insulated T vans for 1894, these vans were recoded to TH.
Most vans had been fitted only with a Westinghouse train pipe, not the full brake apparatus, between 1889 and 1892. The full brake equipment was not installed until the 1909-1910 period. From 1910 to 1923 the class was progressively withdrawn, with the last, TH 11, scrapped on 20 December 1923.
As four-wheeled wagons were not always sufficient to handle the large amount of traffic needed, a fleet of bogie box vans with thick insulation was also developed. 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 long tons (20.3 t; 22.4 short 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 long tons (15.2 t; 16.8 short 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. Van BP1 was painted blue (and presumably with gold stripes) by 7 September 1958. The two vans were scrapped in November 1960.