NZR Rollingstock

A Brief Introduction

The term rollingstock is in many ways self explanatory in that it refers to all the railway 'stock' that rolls on the track. That then includes locomotives, (passenger) carriages, (goods) wagons, (guards) vans, and all special rail equipment like breakdown cranes, service wagons, and modern track maintenance machines etc. In its heyday, NZR had nearly 35,000 items of rollingstock and that all needed to be kept track of. Even in a railway's infancy, the number of rollingstock items increased quickly, Canterbury Provincial Railways started in 1863 with two 1st class and two 2nd class carriages and 18 trucks, ten years later the total had risen to nearly 300 and increasing rapidly. As each new railway was built, it received a standard allocation of locomotives, carriages and wagons, with additional stock acquired once demand had been confirmed. Other than the early railways that started independent from the national Government's public works policy, the types of rollingstock followed a set plan. 1871 say orders placed in England for complete carriages and wagons, usually in kit-set form to minimise shipping volumes, but quite quickly this was changed to importing only the iron-work for wagons with all the timber components sourced locally. Once metal processing machinery was well established in New Zealand, rollingstock could be completely manufactured here using just imported bulk iron and steel, however, more specialised items like wheels and axles continued to be manufactured 'at home'.

While total numbers remained comparatively low, items of rollingstock were quite easy to keep track of even though they were not numbered, as Canterbury Railways operated throughout the broad gauge period. It is likely that most sections of New Zealand's railways will have operated like this in their very early days, as the small number of different wagon types could easily be differentiated by using a simple descriptive term like 'high-sider' or 'horse-box' etc. At some point though, a better means of keeping track of individual items became necessary, and this may have happened at the same time that locomotives got formal classification letters

Classification of Rollingstock

From the very first days of railways there was a need to apply some form of classification to the various pieces of rollingstock a railway had in order to keep track of it all. This was as much for allocating the correct items to be on a train as it was for organising repairs or authorising loading. In New Zealand things were no different, even though railway started as small operations in various parts of the country, each section had to know what it had in order to be able to manage it properly. where all rollingstock was initially grouped by a descriptive names.

At the highest level, there were four groups, namely

Locomotives

Locomotives were initially classified on a system based on the size of the cylinders and the number of wheels. This was primarily a descriptive system that got too complex to extend beyond a handful of locomotive types. Eventually a letter system was adopted allowing for 26 different locomotive types. In practice, two of the letters were not used (I and Z) and some were used twice (A, D, E, J and K), and in our post steam era, locomotives are now confined to either a "D" or "E" primary classification letter for Diesel or Electric

Further details can be found on the page dedicated to NZR Locomotives

Carriages

Carriages are designed specifically for carrying people and were originally horse carriages adapted to run on rails. It wasn't long before the vision was realised of carrying many people in a single carriage. Modern carriages have seating for around 50 on long distance trains and somewhat more on commuter trains.

Carriages all carry a single primary classification letter (A - D) and later with sub letters denoting specific types. Originally carriages were classified with a descriptive term made up of two sections; the travel class followed by the wheel arrangement, i.e. 1st class, 4 wheel. While there was 1st and 2nd class cars, there were also Composite cars with one half 1st class and the other 2nd class. Originally there were only two wheel arrangements 4 and 6, resulting in six possible classifications. By 1878 however, things started to get more complex with now three wheel arrangements (4, 6 and 8), and a further descriptions of Side Door, or End Door. The 8 wheel type were additionally described as American Bogie, and there was also a patented 6 wheel configuration called Cleminson's Radial Axles (designed to minimise wheel wear). This now resulted in 18 different possibilities.

Over the next few years, certain categories started to drop off the lists and a few others come on. Cleminson's radial axles seem to have been replaced by Grover's under-frames, side-door cars were progressively phased out, and cross-seated cars got a category of their own, with Salon now being a 1st class option.

1899 was the first year that passenger carriages were recorded with classification letters in the Annual Returns to Parliament.

Classification of Passenger Carriages

Class	Description
A	Bogiecars over 30 feet long
B	30 foot bogie cars
C	all 6 wheel cars
D	all 4 wheel cars

Today, B, C and D cars have been eliminated completely leaving only some A cars in use by the National rail operator. Examples of many of the older carriages have been saved by heritage groups, either restored or preserved for possible later restoration.

Further details can be found on the page dedicated to NZR Carriages

Brake Vans

Wagons

Carriages and Vans were straightforward in that they each got a single letter "A" and "F" respectively, but clear sub-categories were used in the descriptions that continued to be formally used for many years. Wagons however, had each of their descriptive groups represented by a letter right from the start. The Returns reported in the AJHR's do not listing any wagon classification letters till 1886., unlike Locomotives, where classification letters were already reported in 1881. Carriages and Vans will have received their classification letters at the same time that wagons were formally given letter classifications, and it is assumed that that might have been at the same time as locomotives. A careful study of photographic evidence will be required to shed more light on that. Further in depth information can be found by following each of the links above.