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All railways have to start somewhere. The first passenger carriages of the Victorian Railways were fixed-wheel, with a mixture of first- and second-class bodies on either four- or six-wheeled underframes. Initial designs had some common themes; the A and B type carriages were for first- and second-class travellers, with C reserved for third-class. D class was used for guards' vans. The first vehicles were placed on four-wheeled underframes, later designs having a middle axle added. Some cars were built by the Victorian Railways while others imported. Between 1860 and 1880 the Victorian Railways absorbed a number of private railway operators, and their rollingstock was absorbed into the fleet, renumbered to suit. This explains why records show some cars built in 1855, even though the Victorian Railways only started operating in 1858. At first, numbers were generally kept consecutive with no regard for differing capacities or axle loads. When a carriage was scrapped, either a new one would be built with the same number, or a classmate would be renumbered to fill the gap. Later recodings saw some cars reclassed with multiple letters, such as AB, AD, BD and ABD. Another category was used for older cars in restricted service, with a subscript H added to the class to indicate Holiday traffic - BH, for example. The H superscript was initially just a note next to the code, although it later became an official part of the code. Only second-class carriages were marked as such. From the 1880s new first-class bogie carriages were added to the fleet. Initially these took spare numbers in the A series, the first example being 70A. In 1886 the cars were reclassed as AA, and it is thought that this occurred due to mix-ups with carriage capacities. Ten second-class bogie carriages were also built between 1879 and 1881, with an eleventh converted from a different class in 1888; these cars were reclassed to BB at the same time. The bogie carriages started to displace their fixed-wheel predecessors, with these being shifted into other duties. In particular, with the influx of bogie first-class carriages the majority of first-class fixed wheel vehicles were reclassed to Second and renumbered as B Class. ==A/X/XH== This group ranged from numbers 1 through 274, although over 100 numbers were recycled at least once. The cars were all similar to each other; around four compartments with doors on each side and long seats across the walls of the compartments, with a curved roof over a four- or six-wheeled underframe. Notably, the first few bogie carriages took freed numbers in the A series, until they were separated out to avoid confusion with carriage capacities. The cars were built from the 1850s through the 1880s, with a handful built after that and a large proportion were obtained from other railways. When the cars started to wear out and as new designs came into use (in particular the new bogie fleet), the cars were altered for other purposes. A considerable proportion ended up as workmens sleepers, with a handful of those lasting to 1980. Other cars were converted to second class (and relettered B) or composite (lettered AB), instead of being called AH to follow the BH/etc patterns. * Exhibition Car - 1A --> survives as body in paddock at Raywood, near the 25 km post north of Bendigo. * Vision Test Car - 4A. Number kept as an identity for tracking purposes only. * Cars 67 and 68 later became State/Ministerial cars, and 69 became the Dynagraph car. In the 1910 en-masse relettering of fixed-wheel stock found the letters A, B and D replaced with X, Y and Z respectively. So the A cars mostly became X class; two, numbers 43 and 44 (ex 54A and 61A) were converted to XH on account of their condition, and restricted to occasional traffic only. The resulting post-1910 fleet numbered 1-42X and 45-82X. Cars 1 through 41 had been built as A Class but renumbered to B class previously. In 1913, when the Deniliquin & Moama Railway was taken over, one of their first class cars was renumbered to 43A to recycle that number. * XH 43 was previously 54A; became 146W in 1913, then scrapped 1931. * XH 44 was previously 61A; became 382YH in late 1910, then scrapped 1929. Cars still in service in the 1940s were converted to workmen sleepers known as WS or W Class; three of these later were placed on bogie underframes and became WW class. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Victorian Railways fixed wheel passenger carriages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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