Briquettes are produced from brown coal mined in the Latrobe Valley. They are combustable "biscuits" made by compressing brown coal dust under extreme pressure. Briquettes have been made since the late 1920's, using technology acquired from the Germans.
Normal transport up to the late 1970's was via standard _I__ and _IA_ wagons which by 1977 were being phased out.
Thirty five bogie wagons were built to the JQX_ style in 1977/1978. The class was JBF with numbers 1 to 35. A "hungry board" section was added to the standard hopper design when built.
The wagons ran in traffic between Morwell and the briquette discharge siding at Footscray,and between Morwelland the Nestles factoryat Dennington.
In the 1979 recoding the wagons were classed VHBY.
The last vehicle JBF 32 was modified for quarry traffic and reclassed to VHQY 421 in 1982.
By mistake, JBF 30 was stencilled VHQY 30 for a couple of days until corrected.
In 1982, two wagons were modified for quarry traffic and reclassed to VHQY.
In 1984 all the class but two were withdrawn from briquette traffic. They had been replaced by the VHEY class. The class was modified for ballast discharge and reclassed to VHMY. The remaining two wagons were probably used to support briquette traffic to Dennington, near Warnambool, site of a factory.
In 1986 the last two wagons were modified to VHQY.