In 1925 the the South Australian Railways began to purchase rolling stock and equipment. The Commissioner, Mr Webb, an American, bought American style locomotives and freight stock. Apart from replacing four wheel wagons, the economics of bogie vehicles meant that less vehicles of larger capacity could haul more loads, high load to tare ratios were possible and the rolling resistances of trains were reduced, also leading to higher train load. In conjunction with these orders, the VR purchased samples. One of the types were two louvre vans, which became the V class on VR.
By 1927/28 the VR began constructing their own vans to the same pattern. Early pattern were identical except for corrugated roof and later pattern featured twin doors per side.
In the early 1960's most of these vans, numbered 1 - 82 were recoded to _VF_
In 1956 the railways built fifty more louvre vans. The vans followed on from the V number group and were numbered 100 - 149. Some vans were issued as V with plain bearing bogies and others issued as _VP_ fitted with BX bogies. The vans with plain bearings in this number were later fitted with BX bogies and reclassed to VP.