VICTORIAN  AND SOUTH AUSTRALIAN RAILWAYS

FQX 63' CONTAINER WAGON

In 1969 the Victorian and South Australian Railways commenced building a standard design 63’ container wagon for both broad gauge and standard gauge work. The wagons differed with the type of braking equipment and the storage of deck stanchions however for loading purposes could be considered identical. They are designed to carry 20’ and 40’ containers in various configurations.  

The Victorian Railways built 435 wagons between 1969 and 1978 at both Newport and Bendigo Workshops, they are numbered from 500 to 935. The South Australian Railways built 122 wagons between 1970 and 1975 at Islington Workshops, they are numbered 1 to 122. In the late 1970s some VR wagons were recoded FQF to restrict the usage of the wagons to the broad gauge network.

Later the VR wagons migrated to Freight Australia relatively intact, the SA wagons to National Rail where upon they embarked on a tare weight reduction campaign and partially skeletised the deck and coded the wagons RQTY.

Upon the sale of Freight Australia to Pacific National some wagons went to QRN and were coded QQGY and are used on their Brisbane–Melbourne service.