The Victorian Railways used a variety of flat wagons for the transport of a wide range of loads. Generally speaking, the bogie wagons were custom-built for the job, while the fixed-wheel variants were cut down from former open wagons. Loadings would be placed on the deck and, if necessary, protected with tarps, then secured to the wagons with chains or rope connecting to lashing rings along the side of the wagon frames.

This page covers flat wagons used for general traffic, but also those reserved for ISO containers and other containerised goods, along with flat wagons fitted with bulkheads or other fittings for specialised traffic such as steel pipes or timber. It does not cover flat wagons that were cut down from open wagons, although links to the relevant articles are provided as appropriate.

Flat wagons in the VR fleet included the letter K, Q or S in their code; which of those largely depended on the era that the wagon entered service. K was the original code, with Q introduced for bogie flat wagons and S between the two world wars. It was also fairly common for various classes of open wagons to have their sides and ends removed, temporarily or permanently, to increase the range of flat wagons available.

Unlike other wagon pages and because the vast majority of the fleet was fitted with bogies, these vehicles are not divided into fixed and bogie variants initially, but instead into various traffic types. Some of the wagons listed here may appear at first glance to be more of an "open wagon" type, but they were listed as flat wagons by the Victorian Railways.VR Rail Wagons for Every Freighting Need”, 1 July 1970

General traffic wagons Original design—K, NK & IK The first general traffic flat wagons to be used on the Victorian railways system were four-wheeled deck units classed "K," with around fifty purchased from Wright & Sons delivered in 1859. Notably, the listed wagons in each of these three orders are not consecutive, indicating either incomplete records or that wagons could have been delivered unnumbered with the details applied as they were utilized for traffic.

Another batch of fifty were constructed by the firm Thomas in 1872. During this period the Victorian Railways constructed their own wagons in parallel; including a number of replacements for older, withdrawn vehicles, the total constructed at Williamstown Workshops came to over 130 units between 1873 and 1885. By the early 1890s, well over 80 open wagons had their sides and ends removed, being reclassed as IK and fitted with removable water tanks for a wide range of uses stretching from water to weed spray to tar. From 1 December 1923, the Victorian Railways took control of the Deniliquin & Moama Railway Company and all its assets, including four flat wagons.

From the late 1920s, the Victorian Railways fleet was being progressively upgraded to westinghouse air brakes, but many of the original K fleet were not able to support the new equipment. These were scrapped and replaced with around a hundred cut-down wagons, almost always ex open wagons of the I type but occasionally with other types mixed in; these took on the former K numbers. Many of the surviving original K fleet had since been modified to other uses, with many allocated to crane or construction trains in various roles, and others being fitted with water tanks.

By the 1960s, the K design had largely been superseded by bogie wagons with higher maximum speeds and capacity relative to tare weight. Between that and the longstanding use of the fleet in auxiliary roles, the code connotation had devolved from a traffic wagon to a departmental code. Reflecting this, the open wagons which had been converted to KCC for snowy mountains cement traffic were cut down and converted to safety wagons, used as spacers between other vehicles for over-length loads, such as pipes to Gippsland, or between combustible loads like explosives and sources of heat, particularly but not exclusively steam locomotives. When 160 IK was withdrawn in 1974, it was replaced with the underframe taken from recently scrapped louvre van U1115.

Early bogie wagons (Q) By the 1870s, rail wagon technology had evolved to permit longer wagons fitted with bogies. This allowed higher operating speeds due to better load balancing, and trains were easier to manage with less operating equipment like brakes and couplers over the length, than would be required for shorter fixed-axle wagons.Image victorianrailways.net Some of the earlier batch were constructed by the railways, but for the most part the work was contracted out to Thomas or Tozier. Handbrakes were initially applied to bogies individually, and staff were reminded to apply hand brakes at both ends of a wagon when necessary.Victorian Railways General Appendix to the Book of Rules and Regulations and to the Working time Table, 1953, p.152, clause 16 b) These early wagons generally operated for 20–30 years, most being withdrawn from normal service before the Great War. The majority were scrapped at the time, but like their K predecessors a portion of the class were recycled in other traffics.

A new batch of Q wagons was built starting from 1913. All vehicles of this type used rivetted plate-frame components and a "fishbelly" underframe design with a strengthened centre to resist twisting.Image victorianrailways.net

By the late 1970s Q73 had been allocated specifically to trains originating from Jewell, as a spacer vehicle when transporting cast concrete bridge beams in conjunction with higher-capacity wagons. Other wagons operated in sets, transporting loads of extended, welded rail lengths around the state. These rails were loaded across five wagons at a time, and flexed with the train when running through junctions and around curves.Q Rail image victorianrailways.net

Q129

Q129 is a broad gauge skeletal flat wagon built in June 1926, initially to transfer the Garratt locomotives' engine units from Newport to Colac and Moe, and later used for the NA class engines as well. It is now preserved at the Menzies Creek Steam Museum adjacent to Menzies Creek railway station on the Puffing Billy Railway.

43ft ACF wagons (S) In 1925, the Victorian and South Australian Railways were experimenting with imported, standardized bogie goods wagons designed by the American Car & Foundry, USA, to replace large portions of their existing fleet. While South Australia adopted the designs wholesale, Victoria elected to only import two each of the louvre, open and flat wagon types and a small number of open-top hoppers. However, the Victorian Railways was apparently satisfied with the Q design, as no further S wagons were constructed or purchased.

During the second world war, demand for flat wagons rose astronomically, and to cater for this about half of the open E wagons had sides and ends removed, being converted to flat wagons. Including the original two flat wagons, by the end of the conversion period there were 100 S flat wagons in service. It has been reported anecdotally that the sides and ends of the E wagons were used as covers for piles of debris at Newport Workshops. After the war, 71 of the S wagons were restored to their original E configuration and identities.

Cable drum traffic From 1961, a custom fleet of vehicles were converted for the transport of coils of electrical cables, wrapped around timber drums. The cables were steel with an aluminium shell, produced for the State Electricity Commission, and 1 1/4" thick to handle 222,000 volts. Each drum weighed four tons. They had previously been transported in four-wheel wagons, but the vibration often led to the aluminium coating of the cables being damaged with resulting claims against the Victorian Railways. This was resolved on the bogie wagons with specially designed cradles, and the drums were protected against vibration by recycling withdrawn Westinghouse brake hoses.Victorian Railways newsletter, August 1961

SF, SEF, SC, SCX, VFFX The first wagon converted was open wagon E78, in July 1961, followed by E125 in December of the same year. Both were fitted with cradles in lieu of sides and ends, and recoded SC.

In 1965, a new, general purpose flat wagon was built at Newport Workshops. Coded SFX1, it had a 63  ft-long frame with timber decking, end bulkheads to keep loads from shifting longitudinally, and a full-length lashing rail along the side for rope or chain securing.Flat Wagon steameramodels.com Overall, it weighed around 26 tons for a load capacity of 49 tons. ISO container anchor points were provided along with regular stanchions and other fittings, all of which could be stowed in pockets underslung along the deck of the wagon.

After a year of trials, a further 24 SFX wagons were built to the same design, entering service in batches every few months between mid-1967 and mid-1968. Each unit cost around $13,200 to construct. While these were being constructed further orders had been placed, and less than a week after SFX25 had entered service it was followed by SFX26, to a modified design with all-metal construction. It came out of the workshops slightly heavier but far stronger, and construction continued through to SFX50 to that design, then SFX51 to 60 with a wheel-type handbrake in lieu of the ratchet type employed previously. After a gap of nearly a year construction continued with SXF61 in the middle of 1969, with new vehicles on a regular basis until SFX120 entered service in September 1970. It is not clear which was the first SFX to not have full-length lashing rails provided.

As noted below, proper dedicated ISO container flat wagons were under construction at the same time, and that development took precedence. The SFX wagons had reduced value by this point, and were used instead as blank slates for conversions to other traffic. Eight were recoded to QGF for gas transport on the standard gauge system, and nine others to SFF for dedicated runs between Ballarat and Melbourne, and between Bairnsdale and Westall.

In 1977, SFX100 was provided with experimental tarpaulin frames on runners, allowing them to be retracted along the length of the wagon for loading of paper rolls for the Australian Paper Mills. The wagon was only used for the length of the experiment, and then superseded by a production run to the same concept. It was recoded to VFLX100 with the rest of the fleet, but ended up in extended storage before being cut down almost to its original configuration for pineboard transport.Image victorianrailways.net

The 1979 recode for SFX was VFLX, same numbers. Within a decade of the recoding, only around 20 vehicles were still in service; the rest had been converted to VQLX container wagons by removing the bulkheads and "skeletising" the floor to reduce tare weight. A handful remained in their original form as at June 1989, generally for departmental traffic including transport of welded rail lengths.

Further detail on the class is available in the Australian Model Railway Magazine, Issue 125, April 1984, although the associated drawing is not accurate.

QGF, VQEX & VQEY—Gas transport In 1978, eight SFX bulkhead flat wagons were modified at Newport Workshops for explicit use on the standard gauge carrying loaded gas tanks, fixed within an ISO 20 ft container framework. The wagons had ISO ports fitted and "double shelf" couplers, which took the normal Janney-derived automatic coupler, and fitted steel plates above and below to stop adjacent wagons decoupling in the event of a derailment. The wagons retained their SFX-type bulkheads. It is believed that the fleet only operated in service on the standard gauge line from Melbourne towards Sydney.

SFF, VFLY & VFLF