The Victorian Railways in Australia have had a vast range of hopper-type wagons over the last century, for transporting various types of free-flowing dry goods including grains, fuel, and various powders.
Design As a general rule, a hopper wagon involves an open frame with sloped sheets, giving a wider area at the top and a smaller area at the bottom. The type of intended traffic usually guides both the slopes and whether or not the wagon has a roof to keep the freight dry (for example, with cement or grain wagons). Later designs experimented with pressurised drums to store various powdered goods, pumped into and out of the wagons using external high-pressure air supplies. The traffic will also dictate the design of the unloading mechanism for the wagon, as usually found between the axles.
Ownership In the last eight days of the 1982/83 financial year the Victorian Government arranged a sale-and-lease-back deal covering 560 VicRail hopper wagons; the sale was for and the lease was raised in Dutch guilders, to Dominguez and Barry Financial Services Limited. The wagon classes were not specified in Newsrail at the time, but assuming only bogie type rolling stock was considered for the sale deal it most likely was comprised primarily of the VHGX/Y, 1966 cement and flour type, and 1974 gravity discharge type classes,
1870 and 1915 fixed-wheel, open-top hopper wagons Original fleet The first open-top hopper wagons were introduced around 1870. Forty wagons were built with 10-ton capacity, and used to transport imported coal from the Williamstown, Geelong and Port Melbourne to locomotive depots in the Melbourne area. The first forty were all marked off register in 1910.
Open wagon fleet A further 20 open wagons were built in 1881–1883, but shared the O class and continued the number range up to O60. These wagons were marked for traffic in the Williamstown area, likely only for short-distance work from the Pier to the adjacent locomotive depot and workshops. These were scrapped in 1891–1892; the exception was O54, apparently retained at least until 1897.
1878 type Forty-four hopper wagons were acquired during the takeover of the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company in 1878, and these were identified by the Victorian Railways as O61-O104. They were scrapped by 1889, and replaced with new vehicles recycling their numbers. The Victorian Railways also constructed hopper wagons O105-O154 in 1886–1887 (including two O153's), followed by O155-O209 in 1889–1890. O23 was marked off register circa 1885, and a new O23 was built in 1890 to the new design. The second O153 was renumbered to O210 in 1891. With a handful of exceptions, the majority of this fleet was scrapped following the second world war. The older design was not suited for upgrading to automatic couplers.
15-ton fleet A new open hopper wagon design was introduced from 1915, with a steel underframe. These were called the "standard" fleet, and were fitted with pin-latched drop doors. O211-O260 were built in 1915–1916, followed by O261-O335 in 1919–1920, to accelerate delivery of coal from the Wonthaggi state mine, opened in 1909. The mine was used to overcome supply issues due to miner strikes in New South Wales. Later wagons were built to bring coal from Yallourn, which was mined to generate power at Newport for the Melbourne suburban electrified system.
The final wagons were built in 1923, numbered O334 to O388. Of those, 334–338 and 345 were built to a modified design to transport pulverised brown coal for locomotive trials; a single locomotive, C16, was modified to burn PBC, and the tender was fitted with a pressurised tank for storage. That tender was later transferred to engines DD1022 and A2800 to give data on consumption and efficiency with different types of work.
ON ballast wagons
From 1959, 75 of the 15-ton fleet of O wagons were randomly selected for conversion for ballast train use, and reclassed as ON. Between 1962 and 1968 some of the wagons were returned to the coal fleet, though they retained their ballast-wagon modifications. The remaining ON wagons were used for limestone traffic between Nowa Nowa and Maryvale.
OC sand wagons From the early 1960s, a group of roughly 100 wagons, pulled from both the O and ON sub-groups, were fitted with roofs and sprayed internally with an anti-stick compound, for transport of sand from Koala siding near Lang Lang, to a glass factory in Spotswood. Original numbers were retained.
OJ cement wagon In 1966, ON229 was converted to the new class OJ, as an experimental cement powder wagon. The trials were deemed unsuccessful, and within a year it had been transferred back to Newport Workshops for conversion to OC229.
1901 NN → VHWA/VZMA)
As bogie vehicles became more popular, VR decided to expand the concept into freight transport. The ideal choice for experimentation was a little-used, but very important class of wagon, used for ballasting the track but otherwise having little to no use.
Ex-NN fleet Around 1920, a concept was floated to use hoppers from the NN ballast fleet of wagons to build a higher-capacity type of O wagon. Five hoppers were recycled in this way, becoming the second O1-O5, before the project was cancelled.
1910 QN → VHNA/VZNA
From 1910, another type of ballast wagon was constructed. Known as QN from the start and given numbers 1 to 121, the class construction continued until 1926. The wagons were initially dual-purpose, with a small hopper embedded in the centre of the floor, but with raised sides and ends and steel plates across the floor for carriage of rails and other maintenance materials. Rail carrying probably only continued until the 1950s, with the introduction of KR rail-carrying trucks – four-wheel underframes fitted so that rails could be welded together into longer sections and placed across a number of wagons, flexing as the train ran around curves.
1925 J series (open hopper) and 1951 Box-type series J series (ballast, briquettes, coal, grain) In 1925, the South Australian Railways was part-way through an order for a large number of coal wagons. The Victorian Railways decided to make use of the situation and chose to experiment with the wagon style, by tacking 12 40-ton capacity wagons on to the SAR order. The 12 wagons were imported as kits from the American Car and Foundry Co., delivered to Newport Workshops and assembled there then released to traffic over a seventeen-day period late in 1925. The order from ACF Co. included two each of the 40-ton capacity E open, V louvre and S flat wagons, all of which the SAR purchased larger quantities.
The VR intended to use these wagons for slack coal traffic between the State Coal Mine (Wonthaggi) and Newport Power Station. However they were found to be unsuitable for this, probably because of the rather shallow angles of the hoppers which resulted in discharge issues.
Because the wagons were failures in their intended traffic, some other use had to be found for them. In the 1920s they were used for ballast, then they spent a short time in briquette traffic in the late 1930s, then coal traffic in the 1940s again between Wonthaggi and Maryvale (reversing at Dandenong). They returned to ballast traffic by the 1950s.
Another experiment was conducted in 1957 with J 8 being given a temporary roof as a trial for grain transport, but it is reasonable to assume that all of these experiments were failures; in 1959 J 8 became the first of its class to be converted to CJ format in 1959, followed closely by 12, 11, 10, 6, 7, 9, 1, 4, 5, 3 and 2 over the following two years. Respectively, these conversions were to CJ 51–54 and 80–87.
CJ, CJF, VHCA (cement), VHJA (Gypsum), VHLA (lime) & VHCF (weighbridge test) From 1950, it was found that more capacity was required for cement powder transport from Fyansford to Bandiana for the Kiewa Hydroelectric scheme. To answer the call, a class of wagons was constructed and it became known as the CJ class. Deliveries occurred at a rate of roughly 1–2 wagons per month until CJ 20 was delivered in mid-July 1952. Further wagons were delivered in two batches, with 21–30 arriving 1954–1955, and 31–97 arriving 1957–1961.
The wagons were effectively a flat underframe, fitted with a large covered box. The box contained two pairs of sloped sheets so that the cement powder was carried in two separate compartments; each of these fed a single hatch adjacent to the bogies. This gave capacity for just over of cement powder, equalling roughly loaded.
While the class members were mostly identical, there were a few outliers. During the last batch of deliveries, it was becoming clear that the wagons would not arrive in time to meet demand, so J (1925) hoppers were rebuilt into the CJ design; as such, wagons CJ 51–54 and 80–87 were converted from the abovementioned J hoppers. In this form the converted wagons had a rather odd appearance, as though someone had dropped the CJ-type wagon body into the hopper unit of the J wagons.
Eventually the wagons had their roofs raised; CJ 6 and 14 were the trials for this, but it is not known by how much the capacity or weight of the wagons was increased.
From 1966 to 1968, the capacity for CJ wagons was raised and the vehicles were recoded to CJF. In order to achieve this, wagons 6 and 14 had their roofs raised in a Mansard-style as a trial; they were the only two wagons to receive this treatment, which raised their capacity to . The rest of the class had a different style of roof fitted, with their capacity being raised to . The modified wagons 6 and 14 had a tare weight of around , with the capacity during the conversions raised from . The modifications to the remainder of the regular CJ fleet allowed a capacity of either depending on the quality of bogie, while the wagons previously converted from J hoppers were restricted to because of their tare weight.
However, shortly after the class relettering had been completed it was found that the brakes fitted to the bogies were not powerful enough (against a loaded CJF) to qualify for the 'F' classification, thus from 1968 to 1972 most of the wagons were returned to their previous CJ codes. At this time CJ 16 and 46 accidentally swapped numbers.
After the Kiewa Hydroelectric scheme was completed, the only traffic available for the class was from Fyansford to the Arden Street sidings in Melbourne; this was run as a block train.
Changes from 1979 In the statewide 1979 freight recodings, the wagons became known as VHCA (Victoria, Hopper, Cement, limit); the entire class, save for 9, 52 and 58, survived to have this new code applied. The first wagons recoded were 15 and 37 on 6 April 1979 at Newport Workshops, and the last was number 7 on 28 August 1987 at Ballarat Workshops.
VHLA Limestone traffic In 1981, VHCA 83 (previously J1) was modified and recoded to VHLA 1, for the transport of limestone. To achieve this the top of the wagon was cut off, and the remaining hopper unit had steeper sloped sheets added; while this reduced capacity of the wagon, it also would have accelerated the dumping procedure. It was used for traffic between Nowa Nowa and the Maryvale paper mill, but either traffic was limited or the experiment was a failure, as the wagon was cut up in May 1983.
VHJA Gypsum traffic In 1984, the ten remaining VHCA wagons ex J series hoppers (51, 53, 54, 81, 82 and 84–87) were removed from that fleet and reclassed to VHJA 1–10 for gypsum traffic. The covered roof was removed and replaced with a vertically extended box structure, hiding extended and steeper sloped sheets – like the VHLA, this was to assist in quick unloading, but in this case the extension was provided so the wagons could be loaded to the same total weight as previously. In the late 1980s, some of these wagons were seen in briquette traffic, but by 1993 there was clearly justification for the class as a further 15 VHCA (normal type) wagons were converted, bringing the new total to 25.