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. In a railway's infancy, the number of rollingstock items tended to increase rapidly, 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 rising. Once railways got underway in Otago, there was a continual shortage of wagons, due in part to wagons awaiting repair, but also a continual increase in business. 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. Initially (1871) orders were placed in England for complete carriages and wagons, usually sent over 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 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'.
Britain was of course 'home' for nearly all early immigrants, but it did not take long for New Zealand's railway engineers to realise that by the 1870's the United States of America were also producing quality railway rollingstock and they were keen to get some of that. Some early orders were for fast passenger locomotives and bogie carriages, both of which had a profound impact on how railways would eventually develop in New Zealand.
While total numbers of rolling stock items were low, they were quite easy to keep track of, even if they were not numbered like 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 probably happened in parallel with locomotives which initially just had numbers and a while later got formal classification letters as well. Unlike locomotives however, the other items of rollingstock did not have a single sequential number series
Grouping of Rollingstock
From the very first days of railways there was a need to apply some form of classification or grouping 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 different parts of the country, each section had to know what it had in order to be able to manage it properly. All rollingstock was initially grouped by a descriptive names, but as numbers grew, better systems needed to be developed. Much research has gone into the classification of locomotives, but not so much into the other groups of rollingstock. However, for exactly the same reasons that improved systems were developed for locomotive, they will have applied to wagons and carriages at the time, so it is not unusual to find a parallel system applied to wagons etc.
At the highest level, there were four groups, namely Locomotives, Carriages, Brake Vans and Wagons
Locomotives
Locomotives are the machines that enable a train to move. The first truly reliable locomotive to be constructed was the "Rocket", designed by Robert Stephenson and famously proved its abilities at the Rainhill trials in England in 1830. this led to the 'Railway Age' where bigger and faster locomotives were continually appearing, with nearly all early developments originating in England. The success of a railway could largely be measured by the suitability of its locomotive for the task at hand. For a country as young as New Zealand was, the introduction of railways here was an ambitious move, with Canterbury engaging Robert Stephenson the 'world leader in railways' as adviser, and resulting in a successful, if very expensive railway. Southland's initial attempts resulted in failure, principally due to the locomotive design they selected. Otago was particularly cautious, but it's design of locomotive became the workhorse for New Zealand for many years to come. New Zealand locomotive designers went on to leading the world in narrow gauge locomotive design and introduced several new types over the years. Locomotives were initially grouped on 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 eight were used more than once (A, C, E, G, J, K, P and Q). In our post steam era, locomotives are now confined to either a "D" or "E" primary classification letter for Diesel or Electric
Further details and links can be found on the page dedicated to NZR Locomotives
Carriages
Carriages are designed specifically for carrying people and were originally horse drawn carriages adapted to run on rails. It wasn't long before the vision was realised of carrying many people in a single carriage, and so the railway carriage as we know it today, progressively evolved. Modern carriages have seating for around 50 on long distance trains and somewhat more on commuter trains.
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, and Salon was now a 1st class option. At some stage, probably when letters were also allocated to locomotives in 1877, carriages started carrying a primary classification letter (A - D) followed by a number, and later sub letters were included to denote specific types.
1899 however was the first year that passenger carriages were recorded with classification letters in the Annual Returns to Parliament, the letters A - D had been in used for some time already. The introduction of letters in the annual returns however did not do away with the descriptive classification terms.
Today, B, C and D cars have been eliminated completely leaving only some A cars in use by KiwiRail, 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 and links can be found on the page dedicated to NZR Carriages
Brake Vans
Safe operation of trains has evolved over many years with improvements sadly being introduced following a serious accident. What we commonly call the Guard's Van in more recent railway parlance, started off as a Brake Van, an item at the back of the train that was as important as the locomotive at the front, before the days of Westinghouse brakes on NZR trains. The introduction of fail-safe, whole-train braking was introduced as a result of the fatal collision between two packed passenger trains at Rakaia in 1889. Prior to that only the locomotive and Brake Van has brakes, and these had to be used to safely handle the train in any situation. In the case of the Rakaia accident, there was insufficient distance for distance for the train from Ashburton to stop from thew time the driver saw the red warning light to when he plowed into the back of of the train ahead. Had a through-train braking system been introduced earlier, brakes on every carriage would have assisted the loco and van brakes, allowing the train to pull-up in a much shorter distance.
Following the introduction of Westinghouse brakes on all rollingstock, the importance of the van at the rear of the train was not so great with respect to braking, and it was progressively referred to as a Guard's Van, as these were specially fitted out to accommodate the train Guard whose duties were now less focused on applying the train brake.
From the time wagons of the Government Railways were given classification letters, Vans have always had an "F" classification. It was the introduction of a radically new design of van in 1977 that called for a two letter classification, but as these progressively replaced all older vans, When upgraded trains were introduced on a number of routes around 1989 the vans associated with those trains were re-classified AG and also housed generators to supply 240V power.
The fact that only a single letter applied to all earlier Vans, does not mean that all vans were the same, over nearly a century of train operations, a clear progression can be seen in Van designs.
Further details and links can be found on the page dedicated to NZR Guards Vans
Wagons
Wagons comprise by far the largest group of rollingstock and consequently has the largest variety of members. Wagons are designed specifically for carrying freight, ranging from sacks of grain to heavy transformers, logs to sawmills and froze carcasses to the ports. As part of the other non-locomotive groups, wagons will most likely have received classification letters at the same time as locomotives, but they were allocated the letters G - Z. There was a special group of wagons that were allocated the letter E and these were wagons that were used by the railways for its own work, and therefore not available for customers freight. New Zealand's first batches of wagons were manufactured in Britain and shipped to New Zealand in kit-set form with tenders call for their assembly. This system worked well but it was soon realized that the timber components could just as easily be made here either from native timbers or Australian hardwoods. blacksmithing had become well established to support the widespread use of horses, but as mining and railways expanded, so did heavy engineering, and within a few years, most wagons were being made in New Zealand, with only the wheels and axles imported from Britain.
Rollingstock Classification
The classification of locomotives was formalised in 1877 with the introduction of letters to denote a specific type of locomotive. Variations of the type eventually got a second letter or in one case two. The whole alphabet was reserved for locomotives. and more details can be found on the page dedicated to Locomotive Classification
In a similar way, other rollingstock also got allocated letters, A - D were for passenger carriages, E was for service wagons, F was for brake vans, and G - Z was for goods wagons, although only G - S were initially allocated. Over the years, these early rules have been varied with some passenger carriages being allocated a traditional wagon letter and vice versa.
The annual Parliamentary Returns did not start listing any wagon classification letters till 1886. Locomotives already had them recorded in 1881, but Carriages and Vans came even later in 1889. It is assumed that Carriages, Vans and Wagons were allocated classification letters at the same time as locomotives, but with no published material dedicated to this topic, that cannot be confirmed
The earliest classification list for Carriages, Vans and Wagons from 1886 is shown in the following table.
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| A | Bogie carriages over 30 feet long |
| B | 30 foot bogie carriages |
| C | 6 wheel carriages |
| D | 4 wheel carriages |
| F | Brake vans |
| G | Horse Boxes |
| H | Cattle Truck |
| J | Double Floor Sheep Truck |
| K | Covered Goods Wagon |
| K2 | Refrigerating Covered Goods Wagon |
| L | High-Side Wagon |
| M | Low-side Wagon |
| N | Timber Wagon |
| O | Iron Hopper Wagon |
| P | Platform Coal Truck |
| R | High-sire Bogie wagon |
| S | Bogie Sheep Wagon |
Even today, many of these classification letters still apply, although the majority refer to 4-wheel wagons which have now been eliminated from ordinary train services. Some unused letters from this list can also be recognised as belonging to bogie wagons that are still widely in use. The list that follows has the full alphabet of primary classification letters with each one having been used by NZR during it's history. A few are duplicated where a later use of the letter represents quite different wagon from the earlier use e.g. D as a 4 wheel carriage, and Dd as a double-deck car carrier. Most primary categories have (sometimes numerous) secondary letters, and these can be found by following the links attached to the primary letters.
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| A class Carriages | Bogie carriages |
| B class Carriages | 30 foot bogie carriages |
| C class Carriages | 6 wheel carriages |
| D class Carriages | 4 wheel carriages |
| Dd class Wagon | Double Deck car transport |
| E class Wagons | Special-purpose wagons |
| F class Vans | Brake (Guard's) Vans |
| G class Wagons | Horse Boxes |
| H class Wagons | Cattle Wagons |
| H class Wagons | Heavy Duty container Wagons |
| I class Wagons | Container Wagons |
| J class Wagons | Double Floor Sheep Wagons |
| K class Wagons | Covered Goods Wagons |
| L class Wagons | High-Side Wagons |
| M class Wagons | Low-side Wagons |
| N class Wagons | Timber Wagons |
| O class Wagons | Iron Hopper Wagons |
| P class Wagons | Platform Coal Trucks |
| Q class Wagons | Removable Hopper Wagons |
| R class Wagons | High-side Bogie wagon |
| S class Wagons | Bogie Sheep Wagon |
| S class Carriages | Scenic Carriages |
| T class Wagons | Bogie Sheep Wagons |
| U class Wagons | Flat Deck Wagons |
| V class Wagons | Insulated Wagons |
| W class Wagons | Wagon |
| X class Wagons | Wagon |
| Y class Wagons | Ballast Wagons |
| Z class Wagons | Bogie Box Wagon |