Brief History Of The Class.

In 1899 the railways placed a large bogie open wagon into coal traffic service. The code was OO and it was number 1. Expected traffic was hauling coal from Wonthaggi to Melbourne. At the time it was billed as the largest bogie vehicle 'in the British Empire'.

It featured 6 wheel plateframe bogies and had a capacity of 40 tons. Large indeed for a railway that was running mainly 10 ton capacity wagons. With double doors on each side at each end, diagrams also show it with trap doors in the floor near the transverse centerline.

It seems the wagon failed in service as unloading was extremely difficult.

Photographs show these vehicles on the coal stage at North Melbourne Loco Depot. It seems as though the class was used for loco coal traffic only and never entered continuous revenue service.

From 1912 the vehicles were drastically modified with extended sides and corrugated roof. They were used as breakdown vans which housed all the equipment required to rerail locomotives and rolling stock. These vans accompanied the steam cranes to accident and derailment sites. These vans helped replace older breakdown vans coded S. The 'vans' retained their original class and numbers until the recoding in 1956 to HH.

--
References: Vincent, Peter, "HH - Bogie Breakdown Van", Victorian Railways Rolling Stock 1886 - 1996, CD-ROM, 1998

Heritage Significance

HH2 is significant as it demonstrates an unsuccessful first attempt by the Victorian Railways to design and construct a large capacity bogie coal wagon, and the subsequent adaptation for other duties. Four other HH wagons have survived.