Short history of the MÁV G^h freight cars

The Hungarian State Railway, MÁV purchased high volume freight cars from the rather early days. The first type with this feature was the closed car for charcoal transport. Charcoal has a very low specific weight, one can pack large volume in a car without overloading it. These K^m Class charcoal cars had high triangular roofs up to the clearence limits. They were also equipped with roof doors, placed on the slanted roof side panels. These served to help filling the car up to the roof section. These cars and their similar successors were purchased up the WW1. In the late 19th Century other high volume cars were introduced both in four wheeled and eight wheeled versions, mainly for furniture transport. These also had high roofs and were built with different body lengths.

The G^h Class cars appeared in 1908. The first production lots were manufactured by the Hungarian Wagon Factury, MWG in Gyôr and by Weitzer & Co. in Arad. The major car manufacturer, Ganz in Budapest did not participate in the production, probably because they manufactured another long wheelbase car, the round roof G^p Class.

The relatively long four-wheeled car had a trapeze cross-section roof, like its high volume predecessor cars but in this case the roof was even bigger, it almost filled out the rather large Austrian-Hungarian clearences. The door size was also increased compered to the usual G-Class cars and a ventillation grid was mounted in the door too.

Up to the WW1 almost 1000 G^h Class cars were manufactured. This is a nice number but actually negligable compared to the over 35'000 pieces of standard G-Class cars. The production continued in the early 1920's with small changes in the design. None of the cars was equipped with brakes, neither Westinghouse air-brake, nor hand brake was mounted on them. This was considered normal that time, as the cars were participating only in small numbers in usual freight trains.

One G^h Class car belongs to the Museum Collection in Budapest-Istvántelke, painted green as service car. Another, also green coloured car can be found in backyard of the Hatvan station. A third, in small extent modified car is stored in Slovakia as museum stock member.

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Short history of the MÁV Gh freight cars

Short history of the MÁV G^h freight cars