'Six pack'

[ozbob]

Interesting wagons ..  at Redbank









Photographs mufreight 31st August 2011

[HappyTrainGuy]

Ah the VSO wagons. They've been moving around between Gladstone, Redbank and a couple other places. They are the only 6 prototype hoppers made. QR trialed an articulated set for coal service to lower wagon mass to carry more coal per train but it never worked out. The set now belongs to QRN.

[ozbob]

Few more photographs ...



















Photographs mufreight 3rd September 2011

[HappyTrainGuy]

Put some doors and a loco on it and you'll have the NGR prototype

[Stillwater]

Put some seats inside each wagon and a canvas roof on four posts, and it will look like a suped-up Big Pineapple nutmobile.  It would run about the same speed as the nutmobile, given the condition of the Sunshine Coast Line, so maybe send it up there in lieu of a railbus.  Forget about aboriginal motiff, just leave the loco parked outside the stabling yard overnight and see what a colour job the vandals can make of it. -- Bob's your aunty's lover!   

[mufreight]

Only problem was it didnt want to stay on the tracks and kept wanting to be a road train.
It will be interesting to see if they change the suspension on the single axle units to remedy the problems or just give up and cut it up, it should go to a museum together with other earlier coal service rollingstock.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Just don't leave it in the sidings at Kingston. It'll be jacked up on bricks or on the towbar of someones fully sick commodore

[ozbob]

Looks like the six-pack hasn't moved ... must be a permanent monument to experimentation ...

Some other QRN coal wagons parked on the same line ..











Photographs R Dow 4th December 2011

[somebody]

Just noticed what this thing actually is.

I think there is a reason why no one else uses articulated coal locos.  Articulation surely is to reduce weight where carrying capacity is sufficient with less axles.  Which could not apply to a coal wagon.

[Golliwog]

Just noticed what this thing actually is.

I think there is a reason why no one else uses articulated coal locos.  Articulation surely is to reduce weight where carrying capacity is sufficient with less axles.  Which could not apply to a coal wagon.

I assume by articulation, you mean the shared bogie?

It could apply if the wagon is built like these where each wagon is quite short, as with the shortened wagon there would be less weight overall. One reason I could think of would be perhaps for some of the older coal lines with lower axle load limits, though just from looking, the smaller carriages look roughly 1/4 the size of those full size ones so looking at the number of axles would have roughly the same axle load.

Not sure what the purpose of these wagons was, perhaps to see if they could speed up unload times or some such efficiency gain?

[somebody]

That's what I mean by articulation.

If the wagons are 1/4 the size of conventional wagons, but have 1/2 the number of bogies, what's that tell you about its weight efficiency?

[Golliwog]

That's what I mean by articulation.

If the wagons are 1/4 the size of conventional wagons, but have 1/2 the number of bogies, what's that tell you about its weight efficiency?

That is true, and I did notice that, but if the internal shape is different then you could have more/less coal in that wagon which could work. Who knows what the logic was. As HTG said previously, it was an attempt to lower the wagon mass:

Ah the VSO wagons. They've been moving around between Gladstone, Redbank and a couple other places. They are the only 6 prototype hoppers made. QR trialed an articulated set for coal service to lower wagon mass to carry more coal per train but it never worked out. The set now belongs to QRN.

[HappyTrainGuy]

These aren't new wagons. Their about a decade old lol.